Hero Complex
by abbyepic
Summary: When muggle Kate Foster first met Harry Potter, he saved her...by breaking her fall. She knew then and there that he had a major hero complex. "I hope that you don't make a habit of this saving people thing. You aren't very good at it." She didn't know that he was a wizard, or that he was destined to save the world. Very slight Harry/OC.
1. The Stairs Hate Me

_**Disclaimer: I, abbyepic, do not own **__**Harry Potter**__** or any of its related characters, places, items, timelines, or situations.**_

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><p><em>A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world. <em>

~ Nathanial Hawthorne

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><p>At fourteen years and nine months old, I was still afraid of the librarian.<p>

Though the library at Little Whinging had been renovated in the seven years since my family moved here, its staff had not changed a bit. I placed the stack of books I had picked out on the librarian's desk meekly, trying to make myself look unworthy of her scathing comments and harsh glares. Ms. Kelley was an older woman with steely gray hair and a lined face; her critical eyes matched her hair color, and she never tired of reprimanding library patrons on their softest noises and slightest mistreatment of books. My parents and young siblings liked to poke fun at this irrational fear, but I couldn't help it - grumpy old people intimidated me. It was always my preference to come to the library after lunch time, when the younger, nicer librarian came in - the one who smiled at everyone and made great book recommendations.

Unfortunately, today I had a time limit. At eleven o' clock, my younger siblings would be dropped off from their respective activities, football for my brother and karate for my sister, and I would be expected to be at the house to watch them until my stepmother came home from work at five. When my dad and stepmum had grounded them for breaking a vase (which, in my opinion, shouldn't have been left out in a house inhabited by two rowdy ten-year-olds, anyway), it hadn't occurred to either of them that they both worked from nine to five. Which, of course, meant that I would be spending the first week of my summer holidays as a jailer. I would be stuck at home for the majority of the first week of summer, when I would be making sure they didn't watch any television, use the phone, or go outside the fence around our house. I would only have two and a half hours of freedom, on Thursday - the one day of the week when both of them had practice.

And time was almost gone, meaning that I could not wait for the nice librarian and her friendliness to appear. I had to be home before Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Warner dropped off Devil Child One and Devil Child Two. If I wasn't, and my parents found out, I would probably be grounded myself.

So, I stood my ground as the creepy old librarian scrutinized me, then narrowed her eyes at the books I was trying to check out. Well, they were kind of a strange assortment: _The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe_,_ Pride and Prejudice_,and _Twenty-Five Terrifying Ghost Stories_. Still, though, she shouldn't have been judging me on my eclectic tastes.

"Library card?" she demanded. I fished the laminated piece of paper out of the pocket of my jeans and presented it to her silently. She looked it over before skimming to my file. I would have thought that she would have known my name, as often as I went to the library, but I wasn't upset that she didn't. It made it less likely that she would hunt me down later. "The books are due back in two weeks, Miss Foster. Don't be late."

"No ma'am." I said softly. I took the books as she slid them towards me. "Thank you, ma'am."

I looked up at the clock above her desk. _Crap, _I thought in bewilderment, _where did the time go? _I now had ten minutes to get home; the walk usually took about eight. I mentally cursed at myself. I knew that I should have come earlier. I knew that I should have just picked a book, instead of taking five minutes to choose between _Pride and Prejudice _and _Wuthering Heights_. God only knew how much trouble Alec and Penelope could get in a few minutes.

I headed towards the door quickly, exiting the library's small entryway. Perhaps I should have stopped for a moment to look down. If I had, surely I would have noticed that my left shoe was untied, or I would have remembered the top step from the Little Whinging Library to the main set of stairs in its front. As it was, I hardly even noticed that I tripped until I tumbled towards the ground. I let go of my books unconsciously and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the impact.

Instead of feeling the pavement underneath my outstretched hands, I felt myself fall into something softer and warm. Something that felt a bit like a worn t-shirt. And I had a suspicious sensation that reminded me of an arm wrapped around my waist. My eyes snapped open and I found myself staring, not at all at the ground, but at the face of a boy around my own age.

He looked nearly as surprised as I did. The boy I was lying on top of was remotely familiar, thin and with slightly angular features. I would have guess that he was the same age as me, or maybe just a bit older. His round-framed glasses were crooked, and looked as if they'd been through the ringer. Just above them was a thin, jagged scar on his forehead, partially hidden by his wild black hair. After half a second of staring at it, I realized that it was shaped like a bolt of lightning. That was strange, but it was the almond-shaped eyes behind his beat up glasses that really shocked me. They were the exact color of summer leaves, a deep and vivid color at the same time. I had never known that it was possible for a person to have eyes in that shade of green.

For a moment, I was stunned into stillness. And then I got over it. I scrambled off of the boy, standing up quickly and feeling my face go hot.

"What exactly do you think that you're doing?" I demanded shrilly, brushing a lock of my brown hair behind my ear quickly. A random boy, one who I didn't know, had just caught me when I fell. His arm had been wrapped around my waist.

He adjusted his glasses with one hand, leaning momentarily on the other behind him. "I was trying to save you from falling." He stood up, still glaring at me.

"'Save me?'" I blinked in disbelief. Who was this boy? Then, I allowed my face to settle in what I hoped was a haughty expression. "Well, I hope that you don't make a habit of this saving people thing. You aren't very good at it."

He scowled. "Yeah, I know."

He sounded almost as if I'd hurt his feelings.

I sighed, dropping any attempts at acting tough. "Look, I'm sorry. You just surprised me, that's all. What's your name, anyway?" I asked. I wanted to know who this strange boy was. To be polite, I tacked on, "Mine's Kate Foster."

"Harry Potter," he said. I watched, almost dazedly, as he brushed his hair over his forehead. His scar disappeared from my sight completely, but he didn't move his hand fast enough for me to miss the brand-new red mark on the palm of his hand.

"Is your hand alright?" I asked suddenly. Both of us were surprised when I grabbed his arm by the wrist, turning his hand so that we could both see the cut on the inside. A web of red, angry lines was on the inside of his palm, tiny pieces of broken glass stuck in it. I noticed a broken glass bottle on the ground, shattered into hundred of pieces. This boy, this Harry Potter, must have fallen on it when he tried to catch me, and it must have broken and cut him. I felt instantly horrible. Here was this boy who I didn't even know who tried to help me - got _hurt _just to keep me from tripping down the steps - and all that I had done was act ungrateful.

He must have seen something in my expression that told him that I felt sorry, because he jerked his arm away from me. He rubbed the palm of his hands on the leg of his worn-looking jeans, leaving a reddish smear.

"It's fine," he said abruptly. "Goodbye, Kate."

"No, it isn't," I told him. "It's cut. It looks bad. You might even need stitches!" In all honestly, I was worried. I had never done really well with blood, and the idea that someone had gotten hurt over me only made it worse. "You need to go to the hospital, get it looked at. Or, my stepmum works at the doctor's office around the corner. She'll look at it for you if you tell her that you're my friend. "

"It's not that bad," he said, looking startled at my interest. "I don't need to go to the hospital or doctor."

"Well, you at least need to clean it and put a bandage on it. What if it gets infected or something?" I felt positively green at the prospect. "Please, if you won't go to the hospital, will you at least come to my house and let me give you a bandage?"

He looked at me as if I'd just suggested that we join the circus and perform blindfolded acrobatics together. It wasn't really that far off, in the minds of my parents; letting a boy into our house while they were out was practically eloping in their eyes. One of those weird post-puberty rules.

"No, that's alright, I-"

"Please come," I repeated. Something was telling me that I had to make it up to him somehow. "You got hurt trying to help me. The least I can do is offer you a bandage. I just live around the block."

Perhaps I was coming on a bit strongly, but I did feel as if I owed him. When I owed people, I always tried to pay them back somehow. Harry Potter looked at me considering for a moment, his eyes almost unreadable.

"Alright, fine. I'll come with you." He sighed, more to himself than to me. "It's not as if I have anything better to do, anyway."

Having better things to do reminded me that I was supposed to be home in a matter of minutes in order to baby-sit my brother and sister. "Great." I gave him a half-smile. "Thank you. Listen, though, we've kind of need to hurry up, I'm supposed to baby sit for my brother and sister at eleven."

I turned briskly and began to walk towards the direction of my house.

"What about your books?"

I stopped, remembering that I had come to the library. "Oh, of course," I said, quickly crouching to pick up the books. I smiled at him. "Thank you."

I half-jogged all the way home, checking every few minutes to make sure that Harry was still behind me. He looked increasingly wary as I led him down Magnolia Crescent, the street that my family and I lived on. Like most -if not all-of the streets in Little Whinging, it followed the basic pattern of two rows of two-story houses, each having around four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a nice little garage. The lawns were all green and trimmed, sporting seasonal perennials in the flower beds and the occasional garden gnome. When we had first moved here, I had found it nearly impossible to navigate this neighborhood; putting the white picket fence around our house made it nearly a thousand times easier to find my house.

A car was sitting in front of the house as we came close to it, and I saw my little brother climb out of the backseat. I watched as he waved at the car's occupants, opened the gate to the house, and walked up to the front door. He shook the handle, but couldn't get it open. He kicked the door in frustration. I laughed.

"That's my little brother, Alec," I told Harry, who was still dutifully walking behind me. He nodded, but didn't say anything. Perhaps he wasn't a talker, or maybe he just didn't like me.

In any case, I picked up the pace until I was waltzing through the front gate. Alec was sitting on the doorstep, glaring at me as I walked towards the front door. Alec and I both took after our real mother, who had died when Alec was three and I was barely eight years old. We had both inherited her straight brown hair and blue-gray eyes, and Alec had even gotten lucky enough to inherit her smile. But he had gotten Dad's freckles, a trait that I was often grateful that I hadn't, and had my Uncle Richard's shorter build. It all combined to make him look closer to seven than his actual age of ten. His football uniform was rumpled and wrinkly; there were grass stains on his white shorts.

"Pen's not home yet?" I asked him cheerily as I walked past him. I took the door key out of my pocket and stuck it into the lock.

"No," Alec said shortly. My darling baby brother had always been keen on getting straight to the point, another of his traits that had come from Mum. "Where have you been? And who's he?" He nodded towards Harry, who had just come in through the front gate.

"That's my friend Harry," I told Alec. He raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. Where he got his ability to detect all of my little white lies, I would never know. "He's just going to come in for a minute and get something."

"You aren't supposed to have boys over when Mum and Dad aren't home," came the a voice behind me. I turned just in time to see Penelope slam a car door closed behind her, and her friend's mother's luxury car slid away nearly as silently as it had come. She gave me a taunting grin.

Even though our parents had been married for five years, sometimes the fact that Alec and I weren't technically related to Penelope hit me like a ton of bricks. This was one of those rare moments. Pen's pale, wheat-colored curls were put in a ponytail, but a lock of hair escaped to hang in front of her mischievous eyes. She was already lightly tanned from the sun, despite the fact that summer had just begun. Her eyes were hazel and sparkly, and anyone could tell what she was thinking just by watching them. At the moment, she was wearing her white karate outfit, tied in the middle with a yellow-orange belt. Her cheery, impish face was a far cry from Alec's solemn one.

"Yeah, I know," I admitted, casting a sideways glance at Harry. Unfortunately, he was a male. I then shifted my gaze, so that I was looking back and forth between my siblings. "But the two of you won't tell on me, right?"

But I knew that sibling loyalty didn't go far with these two. "Well, we'd really hate to tell," Alec began slowly. A half-grin tugged on his lips.

If it weren't for the fact that they weren't blood relatives, I would have swore that the two of them had twin telepathy.

"But you know, being grounded is rather boring," Penelope continued for him. "There's really nothing to do. Nothing to distract us from that fact that you're breaking the rules."

"Nothing else to pay attention to." Alec sighed.

I understood exactly what they were getting at, and it nearly made me change my mind about getting a bandage for Harry. Was it really worth it, to make myself feel like a decent person? I was being blackmailed by ten-year-olds so that they could watch cartoons. Of course, I probably should have seen it coming.

Harry must have understood them, too, because he said quickly, "That's okay, I can just leave -"

"No, you're staying," I insisted. To my siblings, I said, "I could let you watch television in the living room while Harry's over. But _only_ while he's here, and _only_ if you swear that you won't tell Dad and Maria that Harry came over, _or_ that I let you watch TV."

"It would certainly make it easier for us to forget your disobedience." Penelope grinned.

"So do we have a deal or not?" I asked warily.

"Deal," they chimed. They followed swarmed past Harry and I, opening the door and flying into the house as swiftly. I heard them cheer as the sound of cartoons suddenly exploded from inside.

"And you'd better hold your end up, because if I get in trouble I'm taking you down with me! I'll tell Dad and Maria about what you did to Mrs. Hill's favorite garden gnome," I called at them. Then, quieter, I said, "Come on in, Harry, the kitchen's just through -" I cut myself off when I saw something like a grin on Harry's lips. I hadn't even known that he could smile. "Oi, what are you smiling at?"

"Your brother and sister remind me of some guys I know," he told me. As I watched, the grin faded, turning into a scowl. It was a pity, I thought. He looked so much nicer when he smiled. "I guess that they're with all of the other friends who've been ignoring me this summer."

"Hmm," I said, not really sure how to respond. I stepped into the cool of the house, grateful to be out of the sun. "Well, come in, anyway. We keep bandages and stuff in the kitchen. You can sit down while I get it out."

I led him into the kitchen, which had clean white cabinets and flowery wallpaper, and gestured to the breakfast table. From the kitchen doorway, I could see Pen and Alec perched on the sofa, eyes glued to the television. I walked to one of the cabinets, taking out the first aid kit that Maria had brought home from work. I popped the little plastic box open, looking at the stuff inside and trying to decide what I would need to bandage Harry's hand. Maria was the nurse; she knew about this kind of thing. I was lucky that I knew where we kept the kit. I had no idea how to deal with a cut.

I took a deep breath, trying to think back to a first-aid assembly at my school. Well, you were always supposed to clean a cut, so that it would get infected, right? I grabbed a few of the individually packaged disinfectant wipes. Since the cut was on the inside of his hand, I didn't think that a band-aid would stick on correctly, so I grabbed gauze and roll of pinkish bandages from the box. I snagged a pair of safety scissors out of the junk drawer, then took all of the stuff over to the kitchen table.

He had put his hand down on the table, palm up. It looked strangely sticky, fresh blood mixing with drying stuff and combining with dirt on his hand to make some sort of red-brown goop. Gross. I felt squeamish and extremely guilty. This was my fault. I tried to tell myself that it probably looked worse than it was, but it didn't work.

"Just a warning: I've never done anything like this before," I told Harry. God, was my voice shaking? How embarrassing.

He looked at me with unreadable green eyes. "I can do it myself."

I shook my head stubbornly. "No." I tried to sound firm, even though I would have loved to take him up on his offer. "I'll do it. It's the least I can do." I opened one of the wipes, then met his eyes. "This has alcohol on it, so it's going to sting."

He gave me a strange, slightly bitter half-smile. "I promise that I've felt worse," he said.

Holding his left hand palm-up with my right (being ambidextrous had its perks), I tried to gently wipe off his cut. It was really freaking me out. I looked up at Harry. I saw one eye twitch just slightly, but other than that, he didn't even react to the sting of the alcohol. I was impressed, in an odd sort of way. I had always been a wimp when it came to pain; as long as I could remember, I always jerked or cried out at the slightest pain. I wondered if Harry had hurt himself badly before, or if he was just tougher than me (which was probably just as likely).

"So, you've felt worse?" I asked conversationally, without looking up from my task. "What did you do to yourself before?"

"You wouldn't believe me if a told you," he told me. His lip twitched when he said it, like his mouth couldn't decide whether or not to smile. I nearly ached to press him for details (after all, how could he say things like that and not expect me to ask questions?) but I thought that he would have explained if he wanted to let me know.

Once I had wiped it off, his cut didn't look half as bad. I didn't feel so guilty when I saw that it wasn't as deep as I'd feared. I took a deep breath. The part that disgusted me was over with. Next was the part that might be tricky. I stuck gauze on top of the clean (but still slightly bleeding) wound; after that, I took the roll of bandages and wrapped it around his thumb, over his palm, and around his wrist. I did it a few times, then got the scissors and cut the bandage loose from the rest of the roll.

It immediately unraveled, slouching into a loose spiral "No!" I cried mournfully. "Don't do that!"

Harry looked at me strangely. "Maybe you should try tying the bandage."

"Good idea," I said, dismayed that my first attempt had been unsuccessful. Darn, that meant that I would have to do it again.

So I did it again, this time making sure to knot the bandage firmly. When it didn't fall apart again, I grinned, feeling relieved and self-satisfied.

My grin faltered slightly when I looked up at Harry. Sure, he was a bit moody and sort of unfriendly, but something about him made me curious. We were probably close to the same age, but he seemed so much older than me. I had the strangest feeling that told me that the boy sitting across the table from me wasn't just some angsty, hormonal guy - despite all evidence to the contrary. Maybe he was someone who had gone through a lot. I thought of the hurt I'd glimpsed when I'd scolded at him outside of the library, about his words about his friends and his comment about feeling pain. My dad had always told me that girls were suckers for a boy in pain. I'd always kind of laughed at him over it, but now I wondered if he was right. Maybe that was why I had such a sudden urge to make friends with some guy I had never met before.

"Do you want something to drink?" I asked Harry. "Water, milk, tea, lemonade, soda?"

"Er, lemonade?" He looked at me questioningly, probably wondering if I had some kind of mental disorder. Perhaps I did.

I stood up, walking towards the refrigerator, where I knew we had a pitcher of lemonade . "Erm, look, Harry," I said as I took two glasses out of the cabinet. "You must be thinking that I'm a really strange person, and I guess that I am a little weird. I mean, I yelled at you and then virtually kidnapped you." I poured the lemonade, feeling thoughtful. "And, well, I guess that I acted sort of ungrateful about everything. If you were really trying to help me, I could have said thank you."

"I _was_ trying to help."

"Then thank you for trying to help," I said. Then I corrected myself. "No, thank you _for _helping me. And I'm sorry that you hurt yourself helping me. I know that you didn't have to, but I appreciate that you did." I handed him a glass of lemonade. "So, in order to prove that I'm a nice person and not a madwoman, I thought that I should try to be friendly. Offering a drink seemed like a friendly thing to do."

"Thanks," he said. He didn't seem to be filled with joy, but he did seem to be kind of sincere. "Thanks, Kate," he corrected himself.

"You're welcome," I paused. A smile stretched across my face. "So, now that I've given you a bandage and lemonade, do you think that we're even now?"

He looked at me for a long moment before he nodded. "We're even."

I grinned, and I was still grinning when my delightful siblings literally galloped into the kitchen.

"Mum's home from work," Penelope hissed frantically. "She's going to know that we've been watching TV."

"And that you let _him _in here," Alec added, nodding towards Harry.

For troublemakers, my siblings weren't very good of thinking up excuses on the fly, which was probably the reason why they were constantly in trouble. Looking past the kitchen doorway to the living room window, I saw the familiar silver car pull into the driveway.

I jumped to my feet. "Crap. She must have come home for lunch!" I looked uneasily between my siblings and Harry, then bolted for the sliding patio doors just behind the kitchen table. "Pen, go outside and see if you can stall her. Tell her about some kind of new karate thing, or better yet, show her something. Alec, go and turn the TV off. If she notices the channel, I'll tell her that I was watching it before you came home. Hurry up!" Both of them scurried off to perform their part in the plot; I heard the TV go off and the door slam. I looked at Harry pleadingly. "My stepmother's home. I can't let her know that I let a boy in the house or she and my dad will kill me."

"You want me to go out the back door." I wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement, but I nodded emphatically.

"Yes, please, and around the garage. She won't see you if you do. _Please_, Harry," I begged. With a sigh, he slid out of his chair and moved towards the open door.

"Oh, thank you so much," I said as I grabbed the sliding door. "Meet me at the park Saturday morning and I promise that I'll make it up to you." I looked behind me; the door was open, and I could hear Maria's familiar voice asking Penelope to please move away from the door. "Well, it was nice to meet you, Harry, goodbye."

I closed the sliding door swiftly and watched as Harry darted around the left side of the house. When his shoe disappeared around the corner and out of sight, I breathed in relief and sank into a chair. As I did, Maria walked into the kitchen and dropped her handbag on the table.

"Hello, dear." She smiled, then slipped past me to rummage through the refrigerator. "Adele was home sick today, so I thought I would come and grab a quick bite to eat with you and the little ones." She emerged from the refrigerator holding a package of lunch meat and a head of lettuce. "What have you been doing today, Kate?"

Maria was a version of what I thought Penelope would look like in twenty-five years: a tall, leggy blond woman with nice curves and a pretty face. She'd told me once that she used to have the same hair color Penelope naturally, but now had to highlight her hair every few weeks to get the same effect. Maria had a thoughtful, intelligent face and gray eyes, as opposed to Pen's greenish hazel pair. Like most days, she was wearing a practical pair of pants and a shirt with cartoon characters on it - the standard outfit, since she worked at the local pediatrician's office. She was so different from my real mother, at least appearance-wise, that sometimes it amazed me that my dad could have fallen in love with both of them.

"Oh, not much," I replied idly, sipping my glass of lemonade. I hated to lie, I really did, but I couldn't see any good coming o telling the truth. "I watched a show on the telly, then went to the library while Pen and Alec were gone. We just came in from playing in the garden."

Not such a bad lie. It could have been worse.

"So, nothing interesting happened?" she asked. She sounded slightly disappointed. That was the thing about Maria: she liked for things to be exciting.

I considered this. "Well, I met someone new at the library. He was interesting."

And he undoubtedly thought that I was insane.

Well, maybe I was.


	2. Apples & Attitudes

_**Wow, I can't believe that I got so many reviews on just one chapter Thank you so much to all the reviewers and everyone who added this to their favorites story list or story alerts, and to everyone who has actually decided to read this second chapter. I appreciate it, really. **_

_**Before we get to the main event, I would like to warn anyone concerned that I am an American, and therefore, I speak and study American English. Please bear with me and alert me if my writing comes across as overly American. **_

_**Disclaimer: I still don't own the Harry Potter series. Anything that you recognize comes from **_**Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix**_**. **_

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><p>When I rolled out of my bed and into the shower on Saturday morning, the house was empty, and I was grateful. It was nice to have the house to myself after a week of spending quality time with my brother and sister. I was especially glad that Alec and Penelope were gone because the day before, they had started one of their rare but passionate rows. The things could go on for days before one of the two of them finally gave up, and usually involved pinching, kicking, or hitting when the argument got out of hand. I hated being in the middle. So, while my parents took them to a football match and then a karate tournament, I was more than happy to stay at home. I didn't want to have to sit between them in the backseat.<p>

Besides, I had told Harry that I would meet him in the park today.

As I rinsed Maria's favorite mint shampoo out of my hair (we were out of the strawberry kind that Pen and I shared), I wondered if he would actually show up. It was always possible, and maybe even probable, that he wouldn't come. I probably wouldn't have, if I was him. I wasn't fond of psychopaths. Despite the fact that I wouldn't have come myself, the thought of him not showing up made me sad, probably more than I would have liked to admit.

I had never been one of those people who cared very much about what they wore, especially when I was doing something like going to the park. As long as my clothes were clean, comfortable, and the right size, it didn't matter to me what they looked like. I choose a t-shirt and a pair of jeans at random from my wardrobe, and found a pair of sandals from last summer under my bed. I didn't bother to dry my hair or put on make-up, and instead of sitting down to eat breakfast, I grabbed a couple of apples from the kitchen on my way out.

I had never mentioned a time for Harry to meet me at the park, and if he showed up, I didn't want to miss him because I was eating corn flakes.

I left the house at around nine o'clock, locking the door behind me. Across the street, an old lady neighbor was watering her pansies. She waved at me, and I waved back.

At one end of Magnolia Crescent was Magnolia Road, which led to the park, and at the other end was Rosewood Avenue, the street the library was on. My house was closer to Rosewood, so the walk to the park was nearly twice as long as the walk to the library, but I didn't mind much. It was a really nice day. The sun was shining and it was just a little bit windy outside, the kind of weather that made me want to skip down the street or sing some cheesy song from a musical. I didn't; instead, I took a bite from the first of the two apples.

I saw him from down the street as I turned onto Magnolia Road. His back was turned to me, but I could see the way that his hair stuck up in the back from behind. I couldn't really be sure, but it looked like he was wearing the same clothes that he had worn the last - and the first - time I had seen him. His shoulders were slightly hunched, and he walked with his hands in his pockets. The fact that he seemed to be unhappy, even on a day as nice as this one, made me roll my eyes. Did that Harry Potter kid just spend his entire life being unhappy?

"Hey, Harry!" I called to him. He turned around, a grumpy expression on his face. He seemed a bit surprised to see me, but he stopped so that I could catch up. I grinned and jogged to catch up with him.

I panted slightly as I stopped in front of him. "You decided to come to the park!" I should not have been so happy, but I was.

"Yeah, er…" He looked at me strangely. Wow, would he ever stop doing that? "Kate, right?"

I could feel my smile deflate. "Yes, and you're Harry, right?" I asked, a little snidely. Admittedly, it probably would have worked better if I hadn't called him by name a minute or so before. I shook my head. We had only met once before. It would be normal for him to have forgotten my name. "So, since you hardly remembered my name, I guess that means that you weren't actually coming to meet me at the park?"

"Well, I was going to the park," he said. He looked almost as if he didn't want to hurt my feelings.

"Oh, it's fine," I said hastily. _Be friendly, _I encouraged myself. "I just didn't want you to think I had forgotten. Because I didn't."

It was a definite understatement, seeing as I had been thinking about it for two days, fantasizing about making friends with the weird grumpy boy from the library. He didn't need to know that, though.

"Do you actually want to go to the park with me?" he asked. He seemed kind of surprised.

I smiled. "Sure. Why wouldn't I?" I held out the apple that I hadn't bitten yet. "Do you want it?"

He took it wordlessly, but he didn't seem so grumpy any more. He continued to walk along, and I walked beside him. The apples were red, and we both munched on them as we walked along.

The park was in sight before I began to speak again. "I don't think I've seen you around before," I began musingly. "Do you go to Smeltings? Or do you go to Stonewall?"

"Neither," he said, chomping on his apple. "I go to a boarding school."

"Oh, really?" That was different. I didn't know any kids who went to boarding schools; nearly everyone who lived around my neighborhood went to either Smeltings, the local private school, or to Stonewall High, the local state school. When Harry didn't elaborate on his school, I supplied, "I go to Stonewall, but I used to go to Smeltings."

I had hated Smeltings. There were a lot of bullies at Smeltings, and they all loved their Smeltings sticks. Even though my best friend Nina's mother was the deputy headmistress and they mostly left her alone, our friend Lizzie and I had been special targets. My parents had given up on sending me to Smeltings after two years. Dad had said that there was no use spending money to send me there if when I wasn't learning anything because I was just miserable. Lizzie had transferred to Stonewall the year after that, too.

"My cousin goes to Smeltings," Harry mentioned, his nose wrinkling just slightly. I guessed that he didn't like his cousin very much.

"What's his name? I might know him." Some of the kids at Smeltings were alright; I was still friends with some of them. The ones that Nina hung around with were pretty nice.

"Dudley Dursley."

Dudley Dursley was Harry's cousin? He had been a year ahead of me at Smeltings, since I had a late birthday, and he was one of the biggest bullies in the school. I could vividly remember my first year at Smeltings, when he and his friends had beaten a boy bloody because he had been doing magic tricks. He was a lump, with an overly-rosy complexion and thick, pale blonde hair. He and Harry seemed to be as different as night and day.

I could just imagine a younger Dudley and Harry playing together at some family function, a little round Dudley breaking scrawny little Harry's glasses and laughing.

"Oh, that's awful!" I burst out. Harry gave me a funny look Then I blushed, realizing what I had just said. "I'm sorry, but he's just such a jerk!"

Harry's lips tilted up slightly. "Try living with him," he said.

"Oh, are you staying with the Dursleys this summer?" I had met the Dursleys before, on a few occasions. They lived a few streets away, on Privet Drive. Maria and Mrs. Dursley were in some kind of garden club together, and all of my encounters with Mr. and Mrs. Dursley had made them seem just as unpleasant as their son. I would have hated to have to stay with them.

Harry's smile-thing vanished. "No, I live with them, actually. I have since I was a baby."

I didn't know what to say, so of course the first thing that came into my mind came out of my mouth. "Well, that must be horrible."

"Tell me about it."

By this time, we had made it into the park. Little Whinging's park was on the large side, with plush green grass as far as the eye could see and a gazebo in the middle. I could hear the not-so-distant sounds of kids laughing on the play equipment, and the pavement around the edge of the park was being used by a pair of runners with a goldent retriever running alongside them. Ignoring the playground, I made a beeline for the gazebo. I had been fascinated by the old wooden structure as a kid, and even when I came to the park with Alec and Penelope now, as a teenager, it was the first place that drew me.

Harry followed me there, and we sat on the wooden bench along the gazebo's sides. Neither of us spoke for a while; I watched him finish the last of his apple, having already finished mine, and toss the core into a nearby trash bin. He sort of stared past me, looking at the kids on the playground with a detached expression.

"Most of them will leave around lunchtime, if you want to play on the swings," I said jokingly.

He gave me a look that clearly suggested that he thought I should leave. "Don't you have something you'd rather do than sit here?"

"No, I actually don't," I replied, feeling more than slightly stung. This boy could get to me in a way that most people couldn't. "I came here because I told you that I would, and I make it a point to keep my promises. Do have something that you would rather do?"

"Yeah, there's something I would rather do," he said, no longer looking irritated but simply unhappy. "I would rather be with my friends, but that's not an option right now."

"If it makes you feel better, my friends aren't around right now either," I offered. When he didn't say anything, I continued to rattle on. "My friend Lizzie's staying with relatives in Dublin, just like every year, and Nina's gone to some special ballet camp. They won't be home until the week before school starts back."

Harry was back to staring at the playground. In all honesty, he was a bit surly. I had thought that I could make friends with him, but I could see that it wouldn't be as easy as I had hoped. When I had first moved to Little Whinging at age eight, making friends hadn't been so hard; nearly all of my classmates had been interested in the "new kid," and when that lost its luster, my seatmates still spoke to me. That's when I knew that Lizzie and Nina would be my best friends. I didn't know what to look for here. I hardly knew him, we didn't have much to talk about, and he didn't seem to want me around anyway.

"Do you really want to go play on the swings?" I asked suddenly. The kids who had been swinging were gone. It looked like they had joined a large group off to the side that seemed to be lining up for red rover.

"What?" Harry blinked.

"Let's go play on the swings." I repeated. "Come on, it'll be fun."

Before he could say anything to that, I grinned. I grabbed his arm and started to drag him to the play area with a grin. He pulled his arm away as we stepped out of the shade and into the sunlight.

"Kate, I don't want to play on the swings," he said. I could barely keep myself from laughing out loud at the expression on his face.

"Oh, yeah, you do," I told him. "I saw you staring at them. Besides, who doesn't like to swing? We have to move fast if we want to get there before some kids. Let's go." I turned, hurrying towards the swing set.

He scowled, but he followed me.

I grinned as I kicked my swing off the ground, and in a few moments, I was hurtling back and forth through the air. Beside me, Harry sat on the other swing but didn't move at all. The look on his face reminded me of someone forced to entertain a small child. Despite his being a spoilsport, I was enjoying myself as I swung higher and higher.

"It's so much fun!" I remarked to Harry gleefully. I probably hadn't had this much fun on the swings since primary school. "This must be what flying is like."

"No, it's nothing like flying," he said. As soon as I had said the word "flying," his eyes had lit up with a weird intensity. It was just a bit mesmerizing. "Flying is so much better."

"Pshaw, like you would know," I said, slowly sticking my feet out and allowing myself to slow down. "I suppose that you fly all the time, don't you?"

He didn't say anything. It was almost like he didn't even hear me.

Then I heard my stomach growl. Apparently, one apple wasn't enough breakfast. I reached in my pocket, checking to see how much pocket money I had grabbed before I left the house. I had enough to get something from the bakery down the street.

"I'm going to the bakery down the street," I informed Harry. "Do you want to come?"

"I don't have any money."

"I think that I have enough to buy you something, if you're hungry," I offered. "Their cinnamon buns are to die for. Oh, and they have great doughnuts."

"Are you sure that you have enough money?" he asked slowly.

"Sure I do." I said, smiling. "Does that mean that you'll come along?"

He sighed. "Why not?"

The bakery was across the street and a few buildings down from the entrance to the park, and it took only a few minutes for Harry and I reach the door to the bakery. As we stepped inside, I was hit by a the sweet, homey scent of baked goods. There was no one at the counter then; the baker was most likely in the back, cooking something. My stomach growled as I looked through the glass at the spread of delicious-looking pastries.

"What do you want, Harry?" I asked.

"Er…" He didn't seem to know. "What are you getting?"

"Cinnamon buns, they're my favorite. But everything here is good."

"Maybe a chocolate doughnut?" I didn't know if he was asking or telling.

"Sure, if that's what you want. Do you just want one?" I wasn't sure if I had enough quid for two doughnuts and two cinnamon rolls, but I would have gotten one bun for me and two doughnuts for him. The idea didn't bother me.

"Yeah, one is fine."

Before I could ask again if he was sure, a heavy-set man in a flour-covered apron waddled into the room. "What can I get for you?" he asked impatiently.

"Er, two cinnamon buns and a chocolate filled doughnut, please," I said.

I watched as the baker placed the pastries in two separate white paper bags, then handed over my pocket money when he gave me a price. I had just enough money, which delighted me to no end. Harry and I sat on the street corner outside of the bakery, where we ate our still-warm food. The cinnamon buns were just as good as ever, but as I watched Harry devour his doughnut in a few bites, I wished that I had bought him two doughnuts and gotten myself just one bun instead. He still looked hungry.

I wondered if Dudley was so fat because he ate all of Harry's food.

"Do you want some of mine?" I asked, pulling my second cinnamon bun in half. Before he could answer, I virtually shoved half of it into his hand. "Here, take it."

"I don't want it," he told me stonily. Stubborn boy.

"Neither do I," I replied, trying to match his tone. It was half of the truth. I hated to sit there eating like a pig in front of him.

He ate it anyway, and when we had both finished, we sat there for a moment in awkward silence.

"What do you want to do now?" he asked me finally. I grinned at him, surprised.

"Why, Mr. Potter, you sound as if you might actually want to spend time with me," I teased, though a rational part of me thought he probably just liked me because I kept giving him food. He just shrugged, mumbling something about not having anything better to do. I ignored that. "Let's go back to the park."

"Do we have to play on the swings some more?"

"Only if you want to. I was thinking that we might just talk, though that doesn't appear to be your favorite hobby." I paused to think.

I was afraid that I was coming off as desperate and lonely, or even worse, as if I fancied him. Please, I barely knew him. I just wanted to spend time with someone my own age. Lizzie and Nina were out of town. If I had to listen to Dad and Maria talk about the prime minister's foreign policies any more, I would scream, and listening to Alec and Penelope squabbling any more about who cheated who at Cluedo would make me pound my head against a wall. That was why I had stayed at home, instead of including myself in their day of family fun.

"Look, Harry," I said finally, "I'm sorry if I'm acting weird. I just thought it would be nice to hang out. Like I said before, my best friends are out of town, and Little Whinging is really boring when you don't have anyone to joke around with. I thought that I would try to make a friend. It just turns out that I'm not very good at it."

Harry stared at me for a long moment. I looked away, directing my eyes at the ground. I had always thought that I was good at reading people, but no matter what, I just couldn't understand him. I was making a fool of myself over him for no discernible reason at all. Hell, I barely even knew him.

"Well, er, I don't think that you're bad at it."

His voice dragged me out of my thoughts so suddenly that I couldn't tell if he was speaking English, French, or Swahili. I blinked, looking up at him.

"Sorry, what did you say?"

"I don't think that you're bad at it. Making friends, I mean."

If he had suddenly sprouted wings and taken off flying, I wouldn't have been more surprised.

"I'm not?" I asked. That same strong surprise was slowly shifting to excitement. "So it isn't absolute torture to spend time with me?"

"No." He stood up, then offered me a hand up. I took it, then dusted myself off as he continued. "You aren't that bad. I would rather be here with you than stuck on Privet Drive with Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia."

Was he actually saying that to me, or was he thinking out loud? Still, though, I smiled at the words. "Thank you. It's always flattering to hear that you outrank relatives."

He didn't say what we were probably both thinking, which was that it would be easy for any half-decent person to outrank the Dursleys any day of the week. Without much talk, the two of us crossed the street again. As we came near the park, I peered across the stretch of green ahead of us towards the playground area. I made a show turning to frown at Harry, poking my lower out.

"Oh no, all of the swings are taken."

Harry groaned.

* * *

><p>It didn't take much time for the summer to fall into a simple, easy pattern. Weekday mornings, I ate breakfast with my family before Dad and Maria went off to their jobs. Shortly after that, Alec and Pen would be sent off to some sort of practice or tournament or day group, and I would be required to clean up the kitchen before I left the house. At some point before lunch, Harry would walk by the house on his way to the park, and I would grab my pocket money and dash up the street to catch up with him. We would sit either in the gazebo or on the swings nearly all morning, and at lunch, we would either walk down the street to one Little Whinging's greasy spoons or I would make sandwiches and we would picnic at the park. All day, we would talk nothing or sit in a mostly comfortable silence. Dad would stop by the park on his way home from work, and I would have to go home and help with dinner.<p>

And then on the weekends, my family dragged me along to all of their karate tournaments, football games, and daytrips. It wasn't a bad way to spend the summer at all, and even though I wished that Lizzie or Nina was around, I wasn't actually lonely without them. I was happier than I had expected.I was already begin to dread the idea of Harry going to boarding school in September, but I was sure that we had the whole summer ahead to have lazy days at the park.

I was wrong.

"Sweetheart," my stepmother began one Saturday evening in the beginning of August, "I've been meaning to talk to you about something."

I knew that something was up immediately, not from her choice of words (Maria called everyone "sweetheart" or "dear"; it was in her nature), but from her tone. We were alone in the kitchen, assembling ingredients for that night's dinner. Maria and I always made dinner together; both of us loved to cook, and it was fun to try out new recipes and dishes together. While we cooked, Dad and the my siblings were outside, laughing and yelling. Any time when Maria and I were alone and she used that tone, I knew that we were about to have a conversation about something I wouldn't like.

"Alright, what's up?" I walked to the refrigerator and began to take out an egg.

"I think that you should stop seeing that Potter boy."

I almost dropped the egg on the floor. "What? Why do you think that?" My voice sounded shocked and almost angry. I would have to tone it down a bit.

"Well, it's just that last week, at the garden club meeting, I was talking to his aunt, and…" Maria made herself busy by rummaging for something in the pantry. "And, well, Petunia let it slip that your friend attends a…special school."

"He goes to boarding school," I said slowly, fighting to keep my voice even. Where was she going with this? "What's wrong with that? It's just some school in Scotland." Or at least that was what he had told me.

"Kate, I would hardly call Saint Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys 'just some school in Scotland.'" She looked up at me, her expression stern but her eyes remorseful. "Your father and I are just worried that something might happen, that's all."

"You think that Harry is a criminal?" I asked in disbelief. "You think that he would _hurt_ me?" It was a funny thought. She wouldn't think that if she had been there when I met him for the first time.

"Not on purpose, sweetheart, but accidents do happen -" Maria began.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. How could she listen to Harry's awful Aunt Petunia about anything? Harry's aunt and uncle, and from the stories that he had told me, I didn't doubt that she would tell such an extreme story. Harry had never told me the name of his school, but I was certain that he didn't go to any school like that Saint Brutus's. He wasn't a criminal. He was my friend, not some psychopath.

"Harry would never do anything to me, whether it was accidental or not!" I said loudly. I didn't just drop the egg now; I threw it on the floor in anger. "He isn't a nutter, and he isn't a criminal. Even if he was, what does it matter? He's my friend, and I don't care if he is a criminal! Which he isn't, by the way!"

At that moment, Dad slid open the patio door. His face was nearly as red as his auburn hair, and sweat was dripping into his gray eyes. Dad was slightly on the tall side and skinny, but he was handsome. He looked as natural in a suit and tie, his usual work clothes, as he did in the sweat-soaked t-shirt and jeans he wore now. "Is everything alright in here?" he asked. He smiled at us both.

It was bad timing on his part. "Are you in on this?" I demanded to know. "Maria's in here trying to keep me away from my friend! She thinks that Harry's some kind of psychopath! Do you think so, too, Dad?"

His smile vanished. So, he was in on it. "Kate, sweetie, please just listen-"

"I don't want to listen!" I yelled. "I can't believe this! You're trying to keep my from my friend! It's so unfair, Harry's never done anything to me and he wouldn't anyway and…" I knew what words were coming out of my mouth next, and I knew that I couldn't stop them. "_Mum would never do something like this_!"

I felt ashamed as soon as the words came out of my mouth. Dad's face became even redder, if at all possible, and Maria gave me an incredibly sad look that reminded me of a kicked puppy. And as if the shame over what I had said and the anger over what they were trying to do weren't bad enough, I suddenly wanted my mum so badly that it ached. I felt tears stream down my face, and it seemed like there was only one thing for me to do now.

I ran as fast as I could and wished that no one could catch me.

* * *

><p>I couldn't keep up my pace for long, and as I crossed the alleyway onto Wisteria Walk, I slowed down. The tears hadn't eased yet, and all that I could think about as I walked was my mum. Mum would have never even considered trying to keep me away from my friend. My mother wasn't like my stepmother at all. Mum was open-minded and encouraging and always so honest. The first thing that Mum would have done if someone told her my friend was a criminal would have been to come meet him herself. She seen how lonely he was and how mean his aunt and uncle were and she would have made me invite him over every night for dinner. She would have been proud of me for becoming his friend. Of course, she probably would have killed me for acting like such a prat.<p>

I missed her so much.

The thing that really made me sad was that most of the time, it seemed that I was the only person who ever thought of her. Dad had gotten remarried, and even though I did love Maria and Pen, it usually seemed like Dad used them to replace my mum. Alec hardly remembered Mum. He had been three when she died, and Maria was the only mum he had ever known. I doubted that he would have had a clue what she looked like if the two of us didn't take after her. No one ever talked about her. The only picture we had of her was in my room, where he never went. He didn't remember her bedtime stories or her favorite red jacket or that she would take us out for ice cream every Friday afternoon, even in the middle of winter.

I was almost at the end of Wisteria when I heard someone yelling.

"And - it - had - better - be - you - and - you - can - tell - him - why - you - weren't - there -to - help!" The words were separated by the sound of something rattling, and I stopped for a moment to wonder what it was. Of course, there was only one way to find out, and I continued on my way towards Privet Drive.

As I came closer, there was a loud cracking sound, and as I began to walk faster, I heard the voice begin to speak again.

"I hope that Dumbledore _murders_ him! Now come _on_, Harry, what are you waiting for?"

What was a Dumbledore? I wondered, then I realized that the person was talking to Harry. I wiped my eyes, then began to jog towards the voices.

I could clearly see out Harry's profile in the light from the streetlamps, and beside him was a little old lady who looked familiar. I recognized her as Mrs. Figg from Wisteria Walk. Leaning heavily against Harry's side was massive, quivering form with blondish hair. Was that Dudley Dursley? I ran over to them, just as Mrs. Figg began speaking again lowly.

"Harry?" I called. "Mrs. Figg? What's going on?"

Mrs. Figg half-jumped as she turned around, while Harry could barely crane his head around to look at me.

"Kate," Harry wheezed. It must have been hard to half-carry Dudley.

"Oh my God, what happened to him?" I asked as I reached them finally, coming to stand in front of Harry and Dudley. Dudley looked awful; his face looked like whitish putty, and he was sweating heavily. His eyes were glassy. He was mumbling under his breath and shaking, and when I (against my better judgment) pressed my hand against his forehead, his skin was abnormally cold and clammy for a balmy summer's evening. He couldn't stand up on his own, that was for sure.

"Oh, he just got sick," Mrs. Figg said, nervously shaking the bag of cat food in her hand. "Harry's just trying to get him home, so if you'll move out of the way…"

Dudley was an arse, and he probably deserved to get sick. I knew that, but it didn't make me worry any less. Did he just get just a virus or cold, or was it something serious? When people started to look like that for no apparent reason, it was always a good reason to worry. I looked at Harry, about to ask if this was normal. He was pale, too, though not as pasty as Dudley, and it was obvious that holding his cousin up was nearly killing him.

I was openly gaping. "Here, let me help you," I said, trying to position myself under Dudley's other arm. I knew that I couldn't support him as well as Harry, but I thought that between the two of us, we could surely make it to Harry's house.

"Thanks," Harry gasped. Slowly but surely, we began to move towards the Dursleys' house, Number 4. It was miserable, holding up roughly a hundred pounds of sweaty Dudley on my side, and it must have been worse for Harry, because he was still trying to catch his breath as we reached Number 3. All the while, I was wondering what had really happened. Could this really be just an illness? Surely not. With every step I took, I began to doubt that Dudley was just sick.

"Harry," I grunted as we - finally - started up the walk to his aunt and uncle's house. I could see a light on inside. "What's going on? Is he really just sick? Is…"

"Kate, look, I can't," he wheezed, "…can't explain…"

"Why not?" I asked. We reached the doorstep, and Harry reached forward to buzz the doorbell. I tried to prop Dudley up a bit, slowly moving out from under his arm.

"Look, I just can't. Not right now." He took a deep breath and buzzed the bell. "Thanks for the help. You should really go now. Goodbye."

"Harry, I don't -" I began, just as the door opened and Harry's aunt stepped out. I could see her outline, but it was too dark to see her face.

"Diddy! About time too, I was getting quite - quite - _Diddy, what's the matter?"_Harry barely made it out from under Dudley's grip before he vomited all over the doorstep. I jumped back off the step, barely resisting the urge to swear. Mrs. Dursley howled. "_Diddy_! Diddy, what's the matter with you? Vernon? _Vernon_!"

"You should go now," Harry told me again, as his uncle started to waddle towards the door. "It's going to get messy." I wanted to tell him that it was already messy, but the wan look on his face told me not to argue. I backed up as the Dursleys started trying to haul Dudley into the house.

"Alright. Er, Goodbye, Harry, I'll see you on Monday. Bye, Dudley, hope you feel better soon!" I scrambled down the walk, hearing the Dursleys yelling at each other, at Dudley, at Harry.

"Goodbye, Kate," Harry said, and his low words rang in my ears all the way down Privet Drive.


	3. Hedwig

_**I'm so, so sorry that this is so late. Thanks to everyone who reviewed and/or added this story to their favorites and/or alerts. You guys made me smile. **_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own **_**Harry Potter**_**, though I do own my original characters, such as Kate Foster, her friends, and her family. Anything that you recognize comes from **_**Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix**_**, though I don't think you'll recognize anything here.**_

* * *

><p>Harry didn't come to the park on the Monday after Dudley got sick, and he didn't come on Tuesday. By lunchtime on Wednesday, I had begun to wonder if he was going to come back at all. Did he forget about me, sitting on Magnolia Crescent and waiting for him to walk by? Was he angry at me? I I couldn't really think of any reason why he would be mad, and I couldn't imagine that he could forget me after we had spent nearly an entire month hanging out together.<p>

Still, it could have happened, couldn't it? And it was so much better than any of the alternate explanations my mind had conjured up. I would much rather have Harry forget me or be pissed off at me than I would have had something bad happen to him or him getting whatever virus it was the Dudley had had Saturday evening.

Sighing, I leaned back against the front door and stared out at the street beyond the fence. I had been sitting there since I had finished my chores that morning, waiting for Harry to walk by as per usual and the two of us to head to the park. That must have been three and a half hours ago. In that time, I had seen dozens of people walk and drive past my house. None of them were Harry, and I found myself extremely disappointed.

Technically, I wasn't allowed to hang around Harry anymore. Dad and Maria hadn't said a word about our argument when I came in Saturday evening and they hadn't grounded me or punished me in any way for my behavior, but I was sure that they still didn't want me around him. For a moment, I felt almost guilty because that I was still trying to go behind their backs. I rejected that guilt almost immediately. It wasn't as if Harry and I were Romeo and Juliet. He was my friend, and I liked to hang out with him, and I wanted to see him.

"I should go see him," I said out loud. I could just walk to his aunt and uncle's house on Privet, knock on the door, and ask if Harry was in. I slapped my forehead, feeling stupid. "Of course! Why didn't I think of that sooner?"

Lack of companionship was reducing me to some fool who talked to herself.

I stood up and dusted myself off before I locked the door behind me. There was no reason to waste any more time at home. If something bad had happened to Harry, or if he was sick, I should go check on him, like I did when Lizzie broke her leg or when Nina had laryngitis. That was what friends did, wasn't it? So, I began the walk to Privet Drive, walking towards the end of the street and then down Rosewood to reach Privet Drive where the two crossed.

The walk was longer than I had realized the other night, and spending it by myself with nothing in particular on my mind made it seem a thousand times longer. Finally, I reached Privet Drive. Like most streets in Little Whinging, all of the houses looked the same, and it took me a long moment to figure out which one the Dursleys lived in. I finally remembered that they lived in Number 4, though I wasn't sure how I knew it.

The way that Harry spoke about his aunt and uncle, I felt like I should make sure that I looked presentable. Before I knocked on the door, I examined my reflection in the shiny car parked in the drive. I thought that I looked like a decent, average teenage girl; my mousy brown hair was in a neat ponytail, my clothes were casual but clean, and the suntan I had obtained this summer made my blue eyes pop just a little more than usual. I nodded at myself and took a deep breath before knocking on the door.

Mrs. Petunia Dursley stuck her head out of the door almost immediately, as if she had been looking through the peephole the whole time I had been standing there. "Yes, can I help you?" she asked cordially, though she wore a sneer on her face.

Mrs. Dursley was cut from the same cloth as Mrs. Kelley from the library. I found it nearly impossible to stand straight and not fidget as she looked at me with her harsh brown eyes. Her hair was a dishwater blonde that was always flawlessly neat, and there wasn't a gray hair to be seen. I doubted that the color was natural, because frown lines were beginning to appear around her eyes. Mrs. Dursleys' neck was sort of long and horse like. She wore an apron over her clothes, probably because she had been cleaning house when I walked in.

I tried to give her a bright smile. "Hi, Mrs. Dursley. Is Harry home? He was supposed to meet me at the park, but he didn't show up." I decided not to tell her that he hadn't come at all this week, or that I was worried about him, or that I really missed him.

She narrowed her eyes dangerously. "Yes, he's here," she said stiffly.

I blinked. "Oh. Well. Could he come outside with me?" I felt like a little kid. _'Mrs. Dursley, can Harry come out and play?' _But when I asked, I already had a premonition that she wouldn't let him come outside. I changed my tactic. "Or could I come in and see him?" I pressed.

"I don't think so." Her lips were drawn into a tight line. "The boy is grounded. He isn't allowed to leave his room."

I bit my tongue to keep myself from asking what Harry had done. I had gotten the impression that he didn't care to spend enough time with his relatives for them to justifiably ground him. Was it because of what had happened to Dudley Saturday night? That didn't make any sense. Harry had helped Dudley get back home, hadn't he? Did they think that he actually did something to Dudley? I supposed that I would just have to ask him about it later, and mentally shrugged it off.

"Oh, alright," I said. I forced myself to give her another uncertain smile. "Thanks anyway, Mrs. Dursley."

"Goodbye, Kate," she said. Mrs. Dursley wore a stiff, forced smile as she retreated into the house. I was surprised that she knew my name, but I was more surprised when she slammed the front door in my face. I blinked at it for several seconds before I realized that I should probably be leaving.

"Goodbye, Mrs. Dursley," I muttered at the closed door, then I began to walk away. Poor Harry, having to live with her. I thought that it was a serious statement about his personality that he hadn't snapped and tried to kill the Dursleys yet. I didn't think that I could have lived in the same house as them without an attempted murder. They were unfair, unforgiving, harsh, and very mean.

I reached the end of the drive and turned to look at the house again. I couldn't help but wonder what went on in that house, sometimes. I was still pondering this when a paper aeroplane soared out of the upstairs window and into my forehead. Surprised, I watched it fall to the ground before I looked back up to the window. The person who threw it was still standing in front of the window. I realized that it was Harry. He shut the window hastily, but I could see that he was still watching me. I crouched to pick up the aeroplane, and when I stood back up, I couldn't see him anymore. Confused, I unfolded the plane.

There was a short note written in the inside in scribble-like handwriting.

_Kate, _

_Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon grounded me over what happened Saturday night. I'll probably be grounded until my school term starts. We probably won't see each other before then. Sorry, you'll have to find something else to do for the rest of the summer. _

_See you next year. _

_- Harry Potter_

Was this some kind of joke? I looked up at the empty window, as if it could provide answers for my dozens of questions, but it was still empty. I felt a lump in my throat. If this was a joke, it wasn't one that I found funny. It was like he was abandoning me. After weeks, he was just going to tell me, 'bye, see you next year'? He couldn't do this. It had to be just a joke. Just a prank. He would probably show up in a few days on my doorstep, begging me to go with him to the park.

But then again, I had never known Harry to be much of a joker.

I crammed the note into my pocket roughly, then turned to flee Privet Drive.

* * *

><p>Without anything else to do, I spent the majority of next two weeks wallowing around the house, cooking food that I didn't actually want to eat, and watching a lot of television. On the rare occasions when Alec and Penelope were home and our parents weren't, I took on the role of babysitter without much complaint. Still, what I really wanted was for Harry to be ungrounded. Lizzie was in Dublin. Nina was gone to ballerina camp. Without Harry, I was companion-less. More than once, I walked to the park, just to be sure that Harry wasn't there. He never was, and I was utterly miserable. I waited and waited for a letter or a phone call.<p>

So, when the phone finally did ring one afternoon, I pounced on it eagerly.

"Hello?" I clutched the cordless home phone to my ear.

"Katie," crooned the distinctly feminine voice on the end of the phone. No, definitely not Harry Potter. My disappointment was very short lived, though. "Guess what? I'm at the train station!"

"Nina," I squealed. I grinned from ear-to-ear, hearing the voice of one of my best friends for the first time in weeks. I forgot about Harry, the jerk of a friend who had gone and gotten himself grounded for the rest of the summer and hadn't bother to even write or call once. "You have no idea how happy I am to hear from you."

"You can't be half as happy as I am," she said, sighing. In the background, a train whistle blew obnoxiously. "Sorry about that, the pay phone's pretty crummy. Like I was saying, though, it's been a long summer. A lot of fun, but it's been so long. Anyway, I'm about to call Mum to come pick me up. I thought that I would ask her to bring you along. We have so much talking to do, I didn't think about bringing stamps so that I could write you from camp, and they wouldn't let us call anyone other than our parents, and…"

"Of course I want to come." I told her honestly. "Nina Allen, you've just made my day. I'll let you go now, because that means I'll get to see you sooner. Bye, Nina."

"See you soon, Kate," she said, and I heard the click of the pay phone as she hung up.

* * *

><p>I stayed the night at Nina's that night, and we talked about anything and everything interesting that had happened to us over the whole summer. This mainly consisted of the boy dancers at Nina's ballet camp and the male instructor that she fancied, though Nina did raise her eyebrows when I described Harry to her. We talked well past midnight, and when I finally went home the next morning (Nina and her mother were going to visit with her aunt and uncle), I was ready to take a nap. I climbed the stairs to my room and plunged into my bed.<p>

I was almost asleep when I heard the sound of something hard tapping glass. Was there someone outside my window? Looking up, I saw something strange: a snowy white owl, perched on the windowsill in broad daylight. Not only that, but there was also a letter clutched in its talons. I gaped at it in disbelief. When I didn't open the window, it gave a small screech and began to tap the window again. It was as if it wanted me to let it in.

Dumbfounded, I walked to the window and opened it. The owl went past it immediately, flying past my now-billowing curtains and landing on my desk. It was as if it had done it a million times before. It dropped the letter it had been holding, and it clicked its beak at me as I stared in shock. I finally walked towards the desk, and took the letter in my hand. I was slightly (well, possibly more than slightly) afraid to open it. The owl screeched loudly at and pecked hand with its sharp beak. It looked as if it was agitated at me for wasting its time.

"Ow!" I said loudly. "Alright, I'll open it now. I'm sorry."

I had a sneaking suspicion of who the letter was from as I peeled open the envelope, and when I saw the familiar messy handwriting, I had to smile.

_Kate,_

_You probably didn't think that you would be hearing from me again this summer, I guess. Just thought that I would tell you that I'll be staying with some friends for the rest of the summer. I didn't think about writing you until someone mentioned that you might be worried about me. Sorry about that. How's it been so far, stuck in Little Whinging all alone for the rest of the summer? It must be miserable. _

_We've been a bit preoccupied here. My friends and I are staying in this old house for the rest of the summer, and no one has lived here for ten years, so it's a bit infested with pests. We have to help my friend's mum clean it up so that people can actually live here for a long period of time. It's disgusting. There are a lot of artifacts here, as well, like stuffed animal heads and this one ugly painting that we can't get off of the walls. There are a lot of us staying here, and other people pop in all of the time - even teachers from the school my friends and I go to, which is weird. _

_We still won't see each other until the end of the school year, but I guess that we could write. If you want to. If you do, you can just send a letter back with the owl. You just need to tell her to take it to me. She'll know what to do. _

_- Harry_

_P.S.: Her name is Hedwig. _

I turned back to the owl. She blinked her large amber eyes at me, the turned her head slightly to the side. She made another clicking noise with her beak, this time a softer, more friendly sound.

"Hedwig, huh?" I murmured softly. She hooted, and I found myself smiling despite myself. "Well then, Hedwig, just wait a moment. It'll only take a little bit to write him back…" I trailed off, beginning to search my disorganized room for an unused sheet of paper and a pen. When I finally found a partially unused History notebook and a gel pen that wrote in neon purple, I set about writing a reply.

_Dear Mr. Potter,_

_I find it highly presumptive of you to assume that I've been miserable without you. In reality, I've been very busy since the last time I saw you, with babysitting and chores and my many hobbies. I wasn't worried about you at all, thanks…_

_Alright, so you've caught me. You're right, and Little Whinging by myself is nearly completely miserable. I've done absolutely nothing for the last two weeks, and I have been worrying about you. Probably more than would be normal. You have no idea the kinds of thoughts I've been having about what goes on in 4 Privet Drive. Mostly, though, I've just been bored. But do you know what, Harry? I'll survive. _

_My friend Nina (do you remember what I told you about her?) is finally back from camp, and I stayed the night at her house last night. It's always so much fun to do that, and I'm jealous that you and your friends are getting to stay together for the rest of the summer. The house that you're staying in sounds pretty gross, but I would take a month of sleepovers with my best friends over a month of Little Whinging any day of the week. Plus, you get to go to boarding school with them. It must be so much fun to get to spend so much time with your friends. By the way, what are your friends' names? You never did really tell me about them, and I'd love to hear about them. _

_And of course I'd like to write to you over the school year. I've always wanted a pen pal. Still, I have to ask: why do we have to send letters by owl? Wouldn't it just be easier for everyone if we just used the regular post? _

_Sincerely, _

_Kate_

_P.S. Hedwig is lovely. _

I put it back into the same envelope that Harry's envelope was in, and stuck it closed with a little piece of tape. "So, I'm just supposed to tell you to take this to Harry?" I asked, extending it to her. Hedwig hooted and took it from me with her beak, wings already spread.

"Wait, do you want some water or something?" I asked, cocking my head to the side. What did I know about owls? Apparently, I knew nothing, because Hedwig sent me a look with her round amber eyes that seemed to say, 'Silly human.' She flew out the still-open window, and as I watched her fly away, I wondered what I had done when I had made friends with Harry Potter.

Two days later, I got a reply. When I saw Hedwig tapping on the kitchen window, I immediately jumped up from my seat at the breakfast table and hurried to let her in.

_Kate,_

_I was onto you from your first line. If you had so many other things to do this summer, then you would have been doing them instead of hanging around me every day. And we both know that you're just toonosy and anxious to not worry about what I'm doing. You're just easily bored. If a summer at Little Whinging is the toughest thing that you have to face, you should consider yourself lucky. _

_Well, you asked about my friends. My best friends are named Ron and Hermione, and both of them are staying here as well as most of Ron's family and my godfather. Hermione is always carrying at least three books around. She's a huge know-it-all, but she's not so bad. Just, you know, really determined. You get used to her. She gets on my nerves sometimes, but she doesn't bother me as much as she bothers Ron, though. Ron is…well, the best way to describe him is 'Ron.' Ron prefers to act like he's stupid, but he's a great chess player. The best in the school, probably. He's sort of lazy and kind of a jerk, but he's a great friend. Most of the time, anyway. We have to share a room here and at school, and we sometimes argue, but mostly he's a good guy. _

_What about your friends? What are they like?_

_The reason that we have to use an owl is because the school I go to is really isolated. Way up in the mountains and stuff. Regular post can't make it up there, so they train owls to do it. Sort of like carrier pigeons, but they're owls. Because owls can actually carry stuff like packages, and they're smarter. _

_- Harry _

_Dear Harry,_

_I have to go back to school in three days. Just three days! I think that I might die, Harry. Going back to school means going back to Maths (which are usually horrible) and science (I'll either have Chemistry or Biology this year, ugh). The worse class, though, is French, which we have to take for two years at Stonewall. For absolutely no reason. Mademoiselle Peters is very strict and her classes just seem to go on forever. Do you have any classes like that?_

_When you wrote about your friends, I could almost hear you describing them and I could almost picture the look on your face. They sound really interesting. As for mine, my best friends are named Lizzie and Nina. Lizzie and I go to Stonewall together and Nina lives down the same street as me. Out of the three of us, Lizzie is definitely more reserved. People usually think that she's shy and sweet, but Nina and I know better. Once you get to know her, you realize that she's actually one of the most cynical people in the world. And then there's Nina. She's very dramatic, most of the time, and she likes to pretend that she's so much more mature than the rest of us, but it doesn't take long to realize that she's just playing. Really, she's more likely to be clueless about something than experienced with it. The three of us have been close since primary school. They're practically like my sisters.  
><em>

_At my school, we just use the regular post. It's too bad, because the owl-thing sounds really cool. I wish that I could go to a school like yours. It couldn't work out, though, because Dad and Maria would never go for a boarding school - especially one so remote that you have to send mail by owl. _

_Sincerely, _

_Kate_

* * *

><p>And so began the next ten months of my life, writing letters back and forth to Harry Potter at his school in Scotland. Over the school year, I learned about his nightmare maths teacher, Professor Umbridge, a strange girl he went to school with named Luna Lovegood, his friend Ron's father being put in the hospital for some weird snake bite, and about Ron's brothers Fred and George setting off fireworks inside the building on the day that they dropped out of school. In return, I told him about my quirky new history teacher, Mr. Bones, about the etiquette classes I was being forced to attend, about Alec and Penelope's antics, and about anything else in general I thought might be interesting. More often than not, Hedwig brought Harry's letters, though other owls in all shapes and sizes were bound to pop up at times.<p>

After a while, his letters became spaced farther and farther apart, and they became shorter and shorter. Some were only a few sentences long, or read like diary entries. Between letters, I was busy - my teachers heaped homework on, I babysat after school for the little girl living across the street, and my thrice-weekly etiquette classes were torturous - but I always read them as soon I got them and replied as soon as I could.

"I feel slighted by you, Katherine," Nina announced dramatically one weekend. She, Lizzie, and I were sitting in her back garden, laying back in the grass. It was the fourth weekend of June, and we were outside enjoying a sunny afternoon. It would be one week - just one week- before Stonewall would be let out for the summer holidays and Harry would come back from his school.

"What do you mean?" I asked, pushing myself up so that I could look at her. "I haven't slighted you, Ni."

We had been laying side by side, with Lizzie in the middle and Nina on her right. I could see them both when I sat up: Nina's hair was long and dark, her Spanish heritage had resulted in olive skin, and her eyes were dark gray. Lizzie, on the other hand, was nearly exactly the opposite, with her short, strawberry-blonde curls, large spring green eyes, and freckle-covered face.

"Yes, you have." Nina sighed. "Me and Liz, too. You don't love us anymore."

"Oh, that is total _crap_, Nina Allen." I sighed and threw myself back down on the ground. "And how exactly do I not love the two of you any more?"

"You care more about writing that pen pal of yours than you do spending time with us," Nina said. "You have since last summer."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, in all fairness, he was the only person around last summer. And he's going to be the only one around this summer, too, since the two of you will be abandoning me again this year. What, I'm not allowed to have other friends?"

"Not ones that you love more than us," Nina said stonily.

"I don't love Harry," I said patiently, "and I certainly don't love him more than my two best friends in the world. What would make you think that I do, anyway?"

She paused thoughtfully, which was rare for Nina. "You didn't get me a card on my birthday."

I snorted. "But I bought you that scarf, and I baked you a birthday cake!"

"Hmm, you should bake cake more often," Lizzie said sleepily. I was at a loss for what conversation she had been listening to. "It was a very good birthday cake. You should bake one for me for my birthday, except that I want mine to be chocolate, okay?"

"Liz, your birthday is in July. You'll be in Dublin..." I felt inclined to point out.

"Well then, you should make me one when I get back in August…" she began, only to be interrupted by Nina, who huffed loudly.

"Maybe she should, but she won't, because she'll be too busy mourning the fact that Harry will be leaving," she told Lizzie. "Because, you know, she loves him."

"You're being ridiculous," I informed Nina. "I don't love Harry, and I don't love him so much that I wouldn't bake Lizzie a birthday cake if she wanted one just because he went away to school." I stood up, stretching my legs and my arms. "I'm going home. Call me when you're done being so silly and we'll talk."

"Bye, Kate," Lizzie called drowsily, rolling over onto her stomach in the grass. "See you Monday."

"See you, Liz. Bye, Ni."

Hedwig was outside of the kitchen window when I got home, with another letter:

_Kate, _

_The good news is that Professor Umbridge won't be coming back next year. The bad news is that my godfather died. _

_See you next week.  
><em>

_- Harry_

Well, crap. How exactly was I supposed to respond to that?


	4. Argue

**_Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter series._**

* * *

><p>"I'm sorry, Harry."<p>

The walk had been silent from the moment I had joined him, but as we came into sight of the park, I felt compelled to finally say something. My voice came out sounding foreign to me, all soft and gentle. Harry turned towards me, and the look on his face made me think of why I hadn't began to chatter when I saw him outside of my house. He didn't look like he was moody or lonely, like he had last summer; he looked strangely tired but generally emotionless.

"About what?" he said. I cringed at his voice. Those were the first words that he had said to me this summer, and his voice was bitter and almost hoarse.

I looked away. "About your godfather. I didn't even know that you had one until I got your letter."

"I wasn't supposed to talk about Sirius."

"Why not?" I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.

He didn't answer, and I decided it was best not to press him.

"Sirius…" I mused out loud. "That's a different name. You don't hear about many people named Sirius. Except for that bloke who broke out of prison a few years back. The one who blew up a street, like, fifteen years ago."

He had killed a lot of people with that stunt, I remembered vaguely, at least ten. No one had ever figured out exactly how he had done it, but it had involved a gas leak.

"Well, my godfather wasn't a murderer," Harry said shortly.

"I never said that he was." I blinked. I supposed that this subject was just too touchy and let it drop. We lapsed back into silence as we climbed into the familiar gazebo. Harry then became very interested in his footwear, scrutinizing his worn tennis shoes for a long moment.

This wasn't exactly how I had expected the day when Harry came back into Little Whinging to go until I had gotten his last letter. I had expected (well, in reality, it was more of a fantasy than an actual expectation) Harry to be at least somewhat happy to see me. In my mind, he would have smiled at me and maybe even laughed a little at my rambling or told a joke.

No such luck.

And so it went for the rest of the day, and then the next two days after that: I talked a little, Harry occasionally grunted in response, and then I gave up and we sat on the swings silently. By the third day, I began to wonder what I could say that would make him less unhappy. It was a question that I wasn't sure I could ever answer, like the famous question about the chicken and the egg. The whole thing made my stomach churn uneasily. Obviously, Harry was upset, hurting - and I couldn't think of what to say to make it better.

It was beginning to drive me insane.

"Just out of curiosity, what would I have to do to make you smile?" I asked, the stray though slipping out of my mouth.

He turned towards me. "What are you talking about?" He frowned.

"That!" I pointed at his scowl. As soon as I began on this trail of thought, it would never stop. "It's like frowning is all that you do, and I know that things have been very hard for you lately, but I just hate it. I hate being around people who are so… So… _depressed_!"

He looked at me oddly. "I'm not depressed."

"But you aren't happy, either," I said, pursing my lips. "Maybe depressed isn't the right word. You're…sullen. Last summer you were moody, but that wasn't so bad. At least last summer you would smile sometimes. You even laughed a few times! This year, it's like you've turned to stone. And I don't understand everything well enough to know how to make it better." Was I starting to cry? _No, no, no, stop it, Kate! _"And I hate it," I finished lamely.

"Kate." Harry sighed. "It's just complicated."

I felt my eyes begin to water, but I laughed. "It's always complicated with you, isn't it?" I didn't wait for him to answer before I jumped out of my swing. "Whatever, Harry. I'm going get some ice cream. You can come, if you want to."

I didn't know that he had followed me until I was outside of the park fence, when he spoke to me. "Why are you getting ice cream?"

I turned around to look at him. "I dunno. I just always want to eat ice cream when I'm sad," I said, shrugging. "Ice cream always makes things seem better, I guess. And God knows that there are always things that could stand to seem better."

My favorite place to get ice cream in all of Little Whinging was located a street away from the park. It was called Sadie's and it was made to look like an fifties style diner, with chrome accents and a black and white tile floor. The jukebox in the corner was playing some old song that was probably as old as my parents, and I the sight of the vinyl-covered barstools made me almost melt. There were no other customers, but there was an older waitress standing behind the bar.

She smiled at us in a grandmotherly fashion. "What can I do for you, kids?" she asked as I took a seat across the counter from her. Her name tag read "Eloise."

"I want a strawberry ice cream cone, please," I requested.

"And what you, dear?" she asked Harry kindly. He had sat down beside me.

"I want a scoop of chocolate, please."

"Sure. I'll be right back with that." She disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared just a few moments later, holding a waffle cone of strawberry and a small bowl of chocolate.

We ate in almost complete silence at the counter, until I finally broke it. "My mum and I always used to go out for ice cream."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Every Friday. It was a tradition." I licked a melting drop of ice cream. The strawberry was delicious.

"Kate, what happened to your mum?" Harry asked eventually. I looked over at him; I must have looked at him funny, because he began to backtrack. "You always talk about your stepmother, but never about your mother."

I took a crunching bite out of my waffle cone. "She died."

"But how did she die?" he persisted.

I looked at him. He was looking at me keenly, his eyes bright like they often were when we talked about our families. "I could ask you the same thing about yours," I said. "I'll tell you about my mother when you tell me about your parents."

He paused for a long moment. Then he said, "Deal." It was almost the last thing I expected him to say, and I stared at him for a moment. Harry never liked to talk about his parents, and I usually didn't press for details. "We'll finish our ice cream and then go back to the park, and then we'll talk about our parents. Alright?"

"Alright," I said, blinking.

And that was what we did.

* * *

><p>"My mother's name was Elaine. She hated it, made everyone call her Ellie. I sort of look like her. Brown hair and blue eyes, and Gran says that I have her nose..." We were back at the park, sitting in the gazebo. Well, Harry was sitting; I was lying down, staring up at the wooden roof. It was a lot harder to describe Mum than I had thought it would be. My words came out sounding rushed and sort of breathless. "She was writer. She lived in London her whole life, but she always wanted to live in a place like this. She and Dad looked at houses here for ages before they bought ours, but she never actually lived in it. She got hit by a car in London and had some sort of brain damage and she died in the hospital." I paused to catch my breath. "I was eight."<p>

I sat up. Harry studied me for a long moment. It was rather uncomfortable. "Your turn," I prompted.

"My parents got married young, and they died when I was a year old. Everyone says that I look just like my dad, but I have my mum's eyes." Harry paused. "We were part of the witness protection program when they died, so they didn't have real jobs, but Sirius told me that my dad wanted to be an aur…policeman and that my mum wanted to be a heal…doctor. A friend of theirs told the guy who was after us where we were, and he came there and…" His voice trailed off. "But they saved me," he added, almost as a whisper. "And the guy disappeared."

I was in complete shock. He couldn't be serious, could he? This had to be a lie. How could he have survived if his parents died like that? There was no way…He couldn't have…And the thought that someone could have tried to kill Harry when he was just a baby…The idea that he might have been long dead today, and not sitting beside me…It was unthinkable. I stared at him, feeling my lip begin to tremble.

Harry stared at the gazebo's floor, not meeting my eyes.

"What were their names?" I asked softly, looking down at the ground.

He didn't seem to have heard me. "What?"

"Your parents. What were they called?"

His eyes were unreadable. "Lily and James."

There was a long silence before either of us spoke again. Predictably, it had to be me who broke the silence, and with some predictably stupid question.

"Why was that man after your family?"

Harry seemed to hesitate, really and truly seeming to be a loss for what to say. "I don't…"

"You have to know, don't you?" I persisted. "People aren't put in witness protection without a reason. Did they do something to him? Why was he after them?"

He stared at me for a long moment. We both seemed to realize what I was saying at about the same time. Harry responded by angrily standing up. "I don't want to talk about this with you," he said harshly.

I recoiled, feeling like he had slapped me. He didn't just _not_ want to talk about it, but he didn't want to talk about it _with me_. That hurt. I felt my cheeks grow hot.

"Fine then, don't talk about it," I replied as I stood up too. "All I'm trying to do is find out more about you, since you never talk about yourself! "

"I don't have to put up with you, you know," he muttered darkly.

He put up with me? _He_ put up with _me_?

"Well excuse me for trying to be your friend! Whatever, if you don't want to put up with me, just go on and be lonely!"

"Yeah, thanks, I think I will. All you are is some chatty, nosy, obnoxious muggle girl! If you're the only friend I have, I think I'd rather just be alone!" Harry told me acidly.

Chatty? Nosy? _Obnoxious_? I'd never been called obnoxious before, at least to my knowledge, and God, it stung.

"Alright then! Don't smile and don't enjoy yourself and don't act as if you have feelings! Hell, if you don't want to talk to me, I'll make it easy for you and just not talk to you! How's that for not having to put up with me?"

"It sounds great!" Harry shouted.

"Fine! Goodbye, Mr. Potter!" I yelled back.

And then I stomped out of the gazebo and away from the park. It wasn't until I reached Magnolia Crescent when I began to wonder what in the world a muggle was.

* * *

><p>"Kate, are you alright?"<p>

The hesitant question came across the dinner table the night after my argument with Harry, from my stepmother, of course. I hadn't expected anyone to talk to me, and I sat up straighter in my seat, putting down the fork I had been using to push my peas around my plate.

"Sorry, what did you say?" I asked, not really understanding what she had said. I heard the words, but it didn't register to me what she meant.

"Are you alright?" Dad asked, looking at me queerly.

"'Course I am. Why wouldn't be?" I muttered, looking back at my plate.

"You aren't eating," he replied, in a typically oblivious Dad-like fashion. Of course, that was understandable, because I usually cleaned my plate at dinner, but still…What a thing to say.

"What your father means, Katie, is that you seem a bit down," Maria told me. She pressed her lips together, a sure sign that she was worried. "You haven't been talking and you stayed inside the house all day."

"You didn't even get angry when Pen turned over the Monopoly board," Alec said, just before he stabbed a carrot with his fork and put it in his mouth.

"Did something happen, sweetheart?"

I hesitated. "I had an argument with one of my friends yesterday. He called me obnoxious."

"But you aren't obnoxious," Maria told me.

"But he thinks that I am," I said moodily, taking a sip of my water. Truthfully, I didn't know if I was or not. But obviously, Harry thought that I was.

"He's wrong," Dad mentioned almost casually as he cut his meat. "You're one of the most pleasant people that I know. And I know a lot of people." He looked up at me and gave me a coy grin.

I forced myself to smile at Dad and Maria, though I was thinking that they virtually had to say that. These were the people who had brought me up. If they said that I was unpleasant, that would be criticizing their own parenting skills. "I guess you're right," I lied, then I did my best to produce a fake yawn. "May I be excused? I'm really sleepy…"

"Of course, sweetheart," Dad said, seeming to feel relieved. "It's Pen's turn to clean the kitchen tonight."

Penelope groaned. I almost snickered at the expression on her face, but I held myself back and stood up from the table. I had every intention to go upstairs, to my own room, and sulk for awhile.

I hadn't expected another living being to be in the room when I got there, but she was sitting just inside the window I had left open.

"Hedwig," I breathed, stunned. "But…but what are you doing here?" She hooted, and I closed the door to my room behind me. She held up one of her legs, in which she grasped what looked like a folded sheet of notebook paper.

My hands were shaking when I took the letter from Hedwig, and my heart was beating quickly as I slowly unfolded it. And then I grinned when I saw the words Harry had written.

_I'm sorry_.

I began to look for my pen, so that I could write him back. So that I could tell him that I was sorry, too.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Yes, I know it's a horribly short chapter...it was a very hard chapter to write. Not a lot happens in this one, but the next one will have more action, I promise. <em>**

**_I have a question for my readers: do you think that Kate is a Mary Sue? I've tried to test her, but it's so hard to find a test for a Harry Potter OC who isn't a witch. I would love to hear your thoughts on her, or how I could make her better._**


	5. Dumbledore

_**I would like to announce that this story, Hero Complex, has amassed nearly 4000 views, is a favorite of 62 authors, has been put on 68 story alerts, and has received 29 reviews as of the publication of this chapter. Wow, I'm amazed. Thank you everyone for your support. It means the world to me. **_

_**Oh, and your patience, of course, since I haven't updated in almost two months. Unfortunately, writing my fan fic keeps getting pushed to the bottom of my to do list since going back to school. Don't worry, though, I'm going to finish this story (and hopefully the sequel I've been thinking of!) if it kills me. **_

_**I already have the next chapter planned out; it's going to be shorter than this one, but I'm really anxious to start writing it.  
><strong>_

* * *

><p>It was cloudy the next morning when I came downstairs, which I found very ironic, considering that I was in a wonderful mood. When I came down the stairs, I found that Maria had made a great breakfast, which made me certain that things were really looking up. I smiled as I slid into the seat beside Penelope at the table and helped myself to a few pieces of bacon. Dad looked up at me from his newspaper and smiled, reaching towards me to ruffle my hair from his corner seat.<p>

"Someone looks happy this morning," he said cheerfully. "Are you done worrying about what your friend said, sweetheart?"

I nodded, swallowing my mouthful of food. "Yeah, he apologized last night."

"Did he call here last night? I didn't hear the phone ring." He was picking up his paper again, which mean that Dad was officially loosing interest in this conversation.

"Nah, he sent a note."

Dad put down the paper again and looked confused, which made me realize that my parents weren't aware that the friend I had been talking about was Harry and that they had no idea about Hedwig. I wasn't sure how I had managed to not bring the two of them up at some point to my family, but I guess that I had. Well, this was going to be a little difficult to explain. My mind started working a thousand miles a minute, trying to think of a way to explain this without him either punishing me or deciding that I was crazy. I couldn't think of anything, which made me a worry a little bit.

Fortunately for me, before Dad could ask any further questions, Maria seated herself at the table and changed the subject entirely. "I hope that this weather clears up before the party Sunday. If it's too wet, we'll have to move the party into the house, and it's such a mess in here, I'd hate for people to come in and see it."

The house was not actually a mess. I was the only member of our household who was even slightly disorganized, and I wasn't even really messy, so as long as there was no one in my bedroom during the party, no one would think that the house was a mess. The fact was that the garden was just bigger and a better place to have a party.

"And Kate, don't forget to pick up your dress from the dry cleaner's today," Maria told me. I groaned out loud. "The ticket's on top of the bread box, and you have to take it with you or they won't give you your dress."

She was really worried that I would forget and not have anything presentable to wear for the party. Maria was funny like that. Three days from now would be Dad and Maria's anniversary - they had been married for five years, and Maria had decided that they would have a party to celebrate their love or something like that. In Maria's opinion, being the hosts of a party meant dressing up and wearing shoes that you hated, meaning that Alec and Dad would be wearing dress slacks and possibly ties and she, Penelope, and I would all be wearing dresses. All of our guest, meanwhile, would probably get off wearing jeans and tennis shoes. The unfairness of this had already been noted by Alec and Penelope, and their protestations had already been denied.

"Alright, I will," I agreed reluctantly. It wasn't my party, right? At least I wasn't Penelope, who had to go shopping for a new dress because she had ripped her only summer dress. Pen hated shopping (one of the few things that we agreed on), and she especially hated dresses. I didn't like going to the dry cleaner's (like the library, it was ran by a rather irritable older lady) but I was sure that I could get Harry to come along, which would make it seem at least bearable.

Apparently, everyone else was almost done with their breakfast when I came down the stairs, because it was only a few moments later when my family members started to drift away from the table, one by one - first Penelope's ride to a karate tournament came, then Dad decided that he needed to be early for his first meeting of the day, then Maria left to drop Alec off at his best mate's house for a birthday party on her way to work. Within fifteen minutes of coming down the stairs, I was left alone in the kitchen with the remnants of a pan of eggs and a piece of cold toast. Whatever. That was fine by me. Who needed them, anyway?

I cleaned the kitchen rather quickly, sorting out the leftovers and then loading the dishes into the dishwasher before I began to wipe crumbs off of the tabletop and counters. Of all of my kitchen-cleaning requirements, my least favorite was sweeping the floor, which I did as rarely as I thought I could get away with doing so. Today, I couldn't ignore the layer of crumbs and dust coating the floor, so I begrudgingly started to look for the broom. I found it in a few moments and used it to sweep the floor. I probably wasn't doing a very good job, because I was trying to hurry and be ready to leave when Harry got there.

I hummed to myself as I swept the floor, which made it seem to go faster, and about the time I was putting it away, there was a knock at the front door. I grinned as I flounced towards the door, and when I pulled it open, I was happy to see Harry standing on my doorstep. He looked different today, less broody and more open, which made my smile increase. This day just seemed to be getting better and better so far.

"Hiya, Harry," I said cheerfully. "Wow, you're early this morning."

"G'morning, Kate," he said, shifting in a slightly awkward manner. He blinked at me. "Er - are you ready?"

"Yeah, I guess so, just let me go get something real quick," I told him as turned back towards the kitchen. I had remembered, at the last moment, that I needed that dry cleaner's ticket, so I doubled back to grab it from its place and turned off the light switch on my way out. I came back to find Harry in almost exactly the same position that I had left him, like he hadn't even moved a centimeter.

"Ready now?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said lightly, and he led me out of my front garden and we started down the street.

The conversation wasn't really moving, but I supposed that that was the norm when it came to my interactions with Harry. I wondered, in a moment of serious contemplation, how he acted when he was with his friends from school. The ones who he wrote about sometimes like, Ron and Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Neville. The people who, presumably, knew him so much better than I did. Did they have inside jokes that made him laugh? Did they know exactly what to say to make him smile? Would one of them have a clue about what to say to him right now to get him to talk to me? I'd wondered about those kinds of things before, but today a new thought added itself to the mix unexpectedly: did he ever tell them about me?

It was so compelling to ask him, but how exactly would that sound to him? It wasn't as if I was jealous of them or something, and it wasn't as if Harry really liked to talk about himself or his school friends with me.

I directed my eyes upward, towards the gray sky. "I think it might rain today," I said, determined not to ask him.

Harry looked up, too. "Yeah, maybe."

I hoped it didn't rain before I had the chance to get my dress from the dry cleaner's. If it did, Maria was sure to be pissed off at me, and I didn't like for people to be pissed off at me. "Hey, can we go do something before we go to the park?" I asked, and when Harry looked at me curiously, I elaborated with, "I'm supposed to pick up something at the dry cleaner's today."

He shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Why not?"

The dry cleaner's was on the same street as the park and the bakery, but was farther down, so it would be a little walk to get there. Harry and I were quiet for the most part, at first making small talk about nothing in particular and then lapsing into comfortable silence. When we eventually found ourselves in front of Little Whinging's only dry cleaners, and I remembered that the old lady who ran it was not a nice old person, I had to take a deep breath and force myself to push open the door. Harry looked at my reaction to entering curiously, but didn't say anything as he entered behind me. The woman wasn't sitting there when we first entered, but she hobbled from the back room as the little bell over the door rang. I didn't know her name, but the dry cleaner lady had worked there for awhile and she narrowed her dark eyes at me as I entered. It took most of my self control to not back out of the room.

But then I looked at Harry sideways and saw the look that he was giving me. It made me look straight at the woman.

"Can I help you?" she asked, sniffing at us disdainfully. I looked at Harry once more, noting that he was looking at the ceiling with his hands stuffed into his pockets.

"Good morning," I told the dry cleaner woman. I would be polite, even if it would kill me. "I need to pick up a dress, for Maria Foster. I have the ticket here." I fished it out of my pocket and slid it across the counter towards the woman.

She snatched up the tiny, thin piece of paper, scrutinized it for a moment, then looked up at me with narrow eyes. I bit my lip, determined not to say anything or show how nervous I was as she stalked towards a rack of plastic-covered clothing. I saw her thumb through the hangers, looking for the right number and finally fishing it out. She pushed it over the counter roughly, and I eagerly grabbed at the hanger.

"Thank you," I told her, trying to sound bright.

"Thank you for your service," she replied. She didn't look very grateful at all. In fact, she looked mildly pissed off. This made me feel rather uncomfortable.

"Come on, Harry," I said, moving towards the door. With one hand, I slung the dress over my shoulder and held it. With the other hand, I reached for Harry's hand to tow him towards the door. The look on his face very plainly asked me what the hell I thought that I was doing; I had no idea, but I pulled him towards the door anyway and outside of the dry cleaner's without looking back.

I let go of his hand when we were once again standing on the street. The intuition that I had had that told me to hold onto his hand left me quickly, leaving both of us staring at my hand and his with strange focus. In his case, it was probably because I had just weirded him out, but in my case it was the realization that his hand was scarred. It was one of the strangest scars that I'd ever seen, even more odd than the one on his forehead; it looked sort of fresh, a series of bold, red-pink lines that streaked across the back of his hand.

"'_I must not tell lies,_'" I read aloud, before I looked up and into his eyes curiously. How could I not have noticed it before? "That's weird, what is it? Did you do that on purpose or did someone…" The question trailed off into nothing.

He sighed. I was really starting to hate listening to him sigh. "Kate, look-"

"Never mind," I interrupted. "I probably don't want to know." But I was lying; I really, really wanted to know, but I wasn't sure if it was worth making Harry angry at me for being nosy or if I might not like what I was going to hear.

"You don't-" he started. I cut him off.

"No, never mind. Did you feel that? I think that it's starting to rain…"

Hundreds of millions of water droplets began to fall from the sky at that moment as if someone had turned on a water hose, backing up my second lie of the morning. Harry looked up at the sky as the rain fell down, before he looked back at me. The sight of rain drops on the lens of his glasses made me laugh.

"Come on!" I said loudly, barely able to keep myself from laughing in delight. "Let's go back to my house!"

"You aren't supposed to have anyone at your house when your parents aren't home!" Harry replied, raising his arms over his head.

Taking his unspoken advice, I pulled the plastic-wrapped dress over my head. "It doesn't matter. What Dad and Maria don't know won't hurt them." It thundered, which prompted me to add, "And the weather's bad, I want to go home."

A bolt of lightning chose that moment to strike, punctuating my point perfectly.

Or I at least thought that it was perfect. Harry shook his head. "I don't want to get you in trouble."

"Yeah, I don't want to get you struck by lightning!" I told him firmly. Then, for the second time since I knew him and the second time that day, I held grabbed his hand and started to pull him after me by instinct.

Unlike the first time, I had a distinct sense of what I was doing. I was holding his hand; I was pulling him after me and down the street, and after a moment, it shifted from pulling him down the street to leading him as he quit resisting it. It occurred to me that I had never held a boy's hand anymore, which made me giggle at the thought of what I had done. I had been bolder than I ever had been, with a boy. And this led to the sudden realization that Harry was a _boy_, which made my cheeks feel hot and made me feel oddly breathless. I didn't let go; instead, I went a little faster.

I wondered what the two of us looked like to the people who watched from the shop windows as we passed: two teenagers running hand-in-hand, wet hair sticking to their scalps and a dress hung over a shoulder. We probably looked like a couple. Just the thought of something like that, of Harry and I being seen as a couple, made me giggle. I wasn't sure what Harry was thinking, but he started to chuckle, too. By the time that we reached my house and I managed to burst through the door, we were both soaking wet and laughing and panting.

We stood in the foyer and allowed ourselves to drip onto the rug, and I looked up at Harry. He was completely transformed when he laughed; his teeth looked whiter, I saw a dimple appear in his cheek, and his eyes looked even greener behind his glasses. My laughter caught in my throat suddenly, though I managed to disguise it with panting.

"This Sunday, we're having a party here at two o' clock.. For my parents' anniversary," I told him, between my gasping breaths. "They told me I could invite any of my friends. I'm inviting you. Please come."

He stopped laughing so suddenly that I thought maybe I'd made him angry again. "Kate, I don't know."

"Please come," I repeated, using my hand to squeeze water from my hair. "I want you to."

Harry looked me over for a long moment. "Alright. I'll be here."

I knew, instinctively, that he wouldn't consider missing it.

* * *

><p>"Stop fidgeting with your tie, Alec, your father will loosen it for you later." Maria said tiredly as she slid a tiny, blue-stone stud into her ear. "And Penelope, darling, I know that you don't like to wear dresses, but it looks lovely on you, so please try to perk up a bit. And Kate…"<p>

We were in the kitchen, Alec and Penelope just slipping out of the door as Maria began making her comments. Guests were just starting to arrive, flooding our back garden and already hitting up the punch bowl on the snack table. Maria was getting some kind of dip or something out of the refrigerator, and was issuing demands.

"What?" I said, looking up from my careful arranging of the biscuit tray. I had spent almost all of the night before baking the darn things, I wanted them to be displayed nicely, instead of being inevitably tossed onto a plate and dumped on the table. They were arranged precisely: first the snickerdoodles, then the chocolate chip cookies, then the ginger nuts, then the shortbread. Maria gave me a disapproving look that instantly cleared up when I changed my tone and said, "Ma'am?"

"I really like your hair in a plait," my stepmother informed me cheerfully as she grabbed a plate of finger sandwiches - some of which contained cucumber, gross - and moved towards the door. "You should wear it like that more often." She stopped as she walked by my work station at the counter to kiss my cheek. "I love you, Katie."

"Love you, too, 'Ria," I told her with a smile. "Happy anniversary."

I hoped that I looked and sounded sincere, because, in all honesty, I did love Maria and I did want her to have a good anniversary. I knew that had gotten lucky when Dad had picked his second wife; I loved Maria and Penelope and having them as members of my family. The problem was that I was having one of those days when I resented not having a real mother, but I was determined not to let anything out to ruin the party.

"Thanks, pet," Maria said. I guessed that I looked normal enough, because she simply slipped out of the door. I watched for a moment, took a deep breath, and followed her out into the throng of party guests. It was time to play the part of the perfect little Stepford teenage daughter, whether I liked it or not.

Out of the dozen or so people who had already arrived at the party, I estimated that I knew about four of them. Of those four, I liked none of them, and after I placed my tray of cookies on the table, I found myself standing awkwardly by the garden fence, near where Alec and Pen and some school friend of theirs where kicking around the football and making jokes about some fat lady's dress. I wished that Harry would hurry up and get there, if only so that I wouldn't be so obliged to make small talk with more distant neighbors and people my parents knew from work.

But he was running late, apparently, because the party went on and on without him showing up.

"Are you looking for someone, dear?" asked an older woman from my dad's office, a secretary or someone who noticed me standing on my tiptoes to try to see above the crowd. She was remotely familiar, though I couldn't exactly remember her name. It might have started with an A.

"My friend is supposed to come," I said, trying to bite back my disappointment and act pleasant, "but he isn't here."

"Oh, so you invited your boyfriend," she said, giving me a knowing look.

"Well, he's a boy, but he's not my boyfriend," I corrected her, trying to discreetly look around again.

She tsked at me. "They always deny it the first time."

I gave her a long look. "I don't think that you understand," I started. "Harry and I-"

I was cut off abruptly when my father loudly cleared his throat and started calling out for every to pay attention to him. The woman and I both turned, as did everyone else in the garden, to face him. Dad was smiling from ear to ear, and as we watched, he put his arm around Maria's waist (a gesture that wasn't at all uncommon, but had always made me feel the tiniest bit awkward). She looked at him questioningly, as surprised by Dad's interruption as anyone else. This must not have been a planned speech.

"First of all, everyone, I would like to thank you sincerely for coming. As you all know, five years ago today, Maria and I were married." Dad paused for a moment to look into her eyes affectionately before he cleared his throat and went on. "It was a second marriage for both of us, two years after my first wife passed away and many years since Maria and her first husband were divorced."

I unconsciously looked around for Penelope, who, as per usual, looked completely unruffled by the mention of the biological father who had walked out on her when she was a baby. As far as she (and the government) was concerned, my dad was her dad.

"However, the day that Maria and I were married means so much more than the day when we became husband and wife. It was also the day when we became a family, not the same that we were before my first wife died, but a new one. A new one that has changed all of our lives for the better, I think." He smiled at me from across the crowd.

I smiled back, then looked around towards my siblings. They had gone off somewhere, I realized, even though I had no idea where they could have gone.

"'Ria," he said, turning towards my stepmother, "I hope that you know that I consider Pen mine, just like you consider Alec and Kate yours. But I think that it's time for us to add a new member to the family, another thing to keep us all together."

He nodded towards the house, where the doors to the kitchen opened and Penelope slipped out. Alec was behind her, and in his arms, he was holding onto…

"A puppy?" Maria said, voice squeaky as a delighted smile stretched across her face. "You got us a puppy?"

Alec and Penelope beamed as Alec handed Maria the wiggly cocker spaniel. It looked frankly adorable; appearance-wise, the puppy had curly bronze-colored fur and dark eyes, and a short-ish, twitching tail. Alec and Pen had been begging to get a dog for ages, with Maria egging them on in semi-secret (semi because, while I was sure she thought that Dad didn't know, he and I had discussed many times when we were alone). Dad had been saying no for years (he was more of a goldfish person), and I had been trying to stay out of it.

"Cute dog. Is it new?" a familiar voice said quietly in my ear. Shocked, I spun around only to grin happily at Harry.

"You're late," I informed him, even though I was so happy to see him that I could almost hug him. Harry was dressed in clothes nicer than any I had realized that he owned, but they looked like a school jumper and tie and I thought that they were probably going to give him a heat stroke if he stayed out in the sun too long. As I looked at him longer, I realized that he had dressed in a hurry; the jumper was a little wrinkled, the shirt underneath it haphazard.

He was looking at me anxiously. "Kate," he said, but he didn't seem to know how to finish.

"What is it?" I asked, noting his expression and becoming worried myself. "It's okay that you were late, I'm not really mad or anything, I was just saying that to -"

"No, it's not that." He took a deep breath. "Kate, I got a letter today. From the headmaster at my school. I'm going to be…leaving, pretty soon. Friday night, actually."

My mouth fell open with a slight popping noise. "_What?_ You're leaving?" I felt shocked and dumbfounded; worst of all, I felt hurt, like I was being shoved to the side. "But where are you going?" I asked, fighting to keep my volume level.

"To Ron's house, to spend time with him and his family. The arrangements have been made already. I'll be there for the rest of the summer."

If anyone else had told me this, I might not have been so affected. I might have just shrugged it off, called it unfortunate and made him promise to write (like I had Nina and Lizzie, when they had went off on their own summer adventures). But there was nothing like that when it came to my relationship with Harry; he could get to me in ways that no one else could.

And it felt like I was loosing him, when I'd only just gotten him back.

* * *

><p>The dog was whining again, and it was beginning to get on my nerves. I looked towards the puppy, where he was frantically pacing in front of the door, and over at my family. Dad was working on something that he had brought home from the office, a report or something that was to be turned into the boss on Monday morning; Penelope was talking on the phone to her friend Dana; Maria was reading a book, a thick mystery novel she'd been working on every evening this week; Alec was playing some stupid game on his Game Boy, the kind that made a lot of beeping noises.<p>

And I was sitting there on the sofa in between Alec and Maria, watching Disney's _Sleeping Beauty _on the VCR and trying very hard not to squeal when Briar Rose meets Prince Phillip for the first time. I had been watching Disney movies since I had gotten home that afternoon, in an attempt to keep my mind off of the fact that Harry would be leaving tonight and that I wouldn't see him again until next summer. It had been starting to work, too.

"Alec, sweetheart, Bruno needs to be walked again before time for bed," Maria said calmly as she turned a page in her book.

"It's Pen's turn."

"Penelope, could you get off of the phone and take out the puppy, please?" Maria questioned, unperturbed.

Pen covered the mouth of the phone with her hand and said, "Mum, I don't want to take him out now. It's too dark outside."

Penelope had allowed our parents to remain under the impression that she was scared of the dark for all of her life.

"Well, someone had to take him out," Dad said, looking up. "I can't focus on this report with him whimpering like that."

I stood up. "Okay, I'll take him."

Maria beamed at me happily. "Thank you, Katie. The leash is on the kitchen table, love. Try to take him for a long walk, will you? I want him to be tired when he gets back. Oh, and don't forget the poop bags. He'll probably have to go at least once."

Bruno had been keeping us and all of the neighbors up that week with his whining for attention.

"Okay," I promised as I leaned down to hook the green leash on the dog's collar while he tried to lick my face. I was definitely coming out on top of that battle of wills. "Come on, sweetie, let's go out," I cooed to him. Bruno yipped in anticipation and I walked him out on the street.

It was slightly cool that night, and I wished that I had been wearing a jacket when I had quickly slipped out of the door. Bruno and I walked with no particular direction in mind, just going and going as he occasionally stopped to do his business. But I couldn't see this going on forever, and Maria had said to take him for a long walk; I think that I knew, in a weird way, that there was only one place that I would be ending up. So I did exactly what my impulses had been telling me to do since I left the house, and I walked straight towards Private Drive.

I had only been intending to walk down the street, maybe see if there was a new car in the Dursleys' driveway; I was going to walk by, not stop in, and just to see, just to convince myself once and for all that Harry would be leaving for the summer. Of course, that was bound to be thrown out the window.

Two people were standing in front the Dursleys' house. One of them was Harry; I recognized his familiar silhouette under the streetlight. The other, however, was foreign to me, which is one of the reasons why I felt so tempted to turn around and walk away. But the two of them had seen me even sooner than I had seen them, almost as if they had been waiting for someone to walk around the street corner.

"Kate," Harry said. It was weird that, even though he wasn't speaking loud and I was almost not even down the street yet, I could hear every word he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Walking the dog," I called ahead of me, taking the dreadful walk forward. "He just sort of pulled me along with him," I lied. "I didn't even know that this was where we were going."

As I came to stand in front of the two of them, it became sure that, as odd as I had thought Harry when we had first met, he was much, much more normal than this man. The man beside him was tall and thin and might have been older than any other person I had ever seen. His long hair - and the matching beard, too - was silver-white and glinted in the streetlight, just like the half-moon glasses that he was wearing. He looked strange, like someone who was going to a fancy-dress party as Merlin, but he smiled kindly at me. I noticed he had nice eyes, twinkling blue ones that were almost as pretty as Harry's but made me feel as if the man could see through me.

It was unnerving to say the least.

"Ah, and you must be Miss Foster," he said pleasantly, still smiling. "Harry's friend."

"Yes, sir," I squeaked. "Er, you don't need to call me Miss Foster. You can just call me Kate."

"Um, Kate, this is my headmaster, Professor Dumbledore," Harry told me. "He's, er, giving me a ride to Ron's house."

I wondered whether or not it was a good idea to fight my strange desire to curtsey. "It's very nice to meet you, Mr. Dumbledore," I said, trying to sound polite and friendly. I wondered what else that I could say, since the standard "I've been told a lot about you" didn't seem appropriate in the situation.

"And you as well, Kate." Professor Dumbledore continued to smile at me. "It seems that young Harry has a knack for choosing his friends well, inside and outside of Hogwarts."

"Hogwarts?" I repeated out loud dumbly. It had never occurred to me to ask what the name of Harry's school was. "Is that what your school is called?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "I imagine that it must seem a rather odd name to you, but our founders certainly had their reasons for choosing it."

The only thing that I could think to squeak out was a "Yes, sir."

"Now, Kate Foster," the older man began, "I do hate to cut our meeting short, but Harry and I have a long trip ahead of us and really should be leaving."

I nodded quickly. "I understand, sir. It was very nice to meet you." I looked towards Harry, who had a carefully guarded expression on his face. "Well, goodbye then, Harry. I hope that you really have a lot of fun with your friends this summer. Oh, and that you have a good school year. Don't forget to write me, okay?" I gave him a smile, then tried to give the same to Dumbledore.

"Bye, Kate. Have a good year." Harry looked up at Dumbledore, almost as if I wasn't standing there. "I'm ready, Professor."

"Let us go, then. I believe that I have parked my car just around the corner, Harry." Dumbledore looked at me with consideration, eyes sparkling. "I hope that we have the chance to meet again, Kate Foster."

I mumbled something after that - though I'm not sure what it was, exactly - and then I fled, taking the now-exhausted Bruno and fleeing back up the street. I was almost afraid to turn around, but I found myself wanting more and more to do so. When I did, I discovered that Harry and Dumbledore were gone. It was like they had disappeared into thin air.

They must have been fast walkers.


	6. Not Harry's Girl

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Please don't sue me. **_

_**Also, there may be some, ahem, inappropriate language in this chapter. I generally don't use the "F-word", but I can't see the character that will be saying it saying "freak" instead like I usually do. My apologies to those readers who do not condone use of such language; I hope I haven't offended you too terribly.**_

* * *

><p><em>Dear Harry,<em>

_It's been awhile since you wrote to me. I just wanted to remind you that I'm still here, and that I'd love to hear from you. _

_Yours truly, _

_Kate_

* * *

><p><em>To Whom It May Concern: <em>

_My correspondence with a H. Potter has been abruptly cut off. I would very much like for him to contact me, so if anyone knows where he is, please alert him to the fact that there is a girl in Little Whinging who is waiting for a letter. _

_- K. Foster_

* * *

><p><em>Mr. Potter, <em>

_You haven't written me the first of the month. It's five days until Christmas, so I think that you're overdue. _

_- Kate Foster_

* * *

><p><em>Harry, <em>

_I miss you and I can't send you a letter unless you send one to me. Please write soon. _

_- Kate_

_P.S. - Don't you even want your Christmas present?_

* * *

><p>Like the other sheets of paper before it, I ripped my latest letter to Harry out of my notebook and threw it into the rubbish bin beside my desk. It was just another waste of paper and ink, just one more letter that I couldn't possibly send. I didn't have an owl like Harry, which meant that I couldn't send him a letter unless he sent Hedwig to me. And he hadn't done that in almost a month. I missed getting letters from him, just hearing from him and finding out what he had been up to. I missed sending him letters too, just having someone to complain to when I didn't have anyone else to talk to. I wished that he would write.<p>

He was probably too busy to write, busy hanging out with his friends Ron and Hermione and busy with his school work and busy with those private tutoring sessions with his headmaster that he mentioned once or twice. He would go into that village beside his school, and he was probably doing stuff with his sports team. He was probably just so busy and overwhelmed that he couldn't even think to write. And there was no reason for me to take this personally; he was just busy, that was all. And it wasn't as if I wasn't busy, too, so there was no real reason for me to be upset…But I was. Undeniably. He had forgotten me. How could I not be hurt about that?

My bedroom door flew open and hit my wall with a small bang, and I looked up, expecting for Alec or Penelope to enter. Instead, Lizzie and Nina flooded into my room, throwing their jackets and their handbags down on my rug. Before I could say a word, Lizzie was lounging across my bed and Nina had planted her butt on my desk and on top of my notebook. She was humming some song that I didn't know, probably something Spanish from that CD her cousin sent her. I blinked at the two of them, trying to figure out what exactly they were doing there.

"So, guys," I began, "What are you doing here?"

Typically, they ignored my question. "When are your parents going to come home?" Nina demanded to know, twirling a piece of black-ish hair around her finger.

"Any minute now, I think," I said, turning around to squint at the alarm clock on my beside side table. "They said that they would be home by five." Which meant that they would be home at five thirty, in about five minutes, since neither Dad nor Maria was ever particularly preoccupied with being punctual. "Why?"

"Do you think that they'll let you stay over tonight?" Lizzie asked, as she started to go through the stuff in my nightstand drawer. Because I knew that there was no point in telling her not to, I didn't bother to tell her to quit it. Besides, what did I have that I needed to hide from them?

"Yeah, probably," I said, looking back and forth between them. The looks on their faces - forced neutrality, something that was a telltale sign with my friends - made me groan. "Guys, what's going on? I know that there's something that you aren't telling me, you know. You should just say it right now and save us all of the time and effort."

"We've decided that we're going to have a slumber party at my house tonight," my redheaded friend informed me, "and we think that it would be a good idea for you to come, too."

"Liz, Nina, that's really nice, but I don't think that I want to -"

"Please, Kate," Nina implored, looking at me with huge brown eyes. "You know that you want to. Come on, Mum's going out with her new boyfriend and won't be in till late, and she told me that I could invite up to two friends over. Of course, that's you and Lizzie, since you are my best friends forever. And I have some great plans for what we're going to tonight, and it's going to be absolutely amazing."

Hmm, that sounded sort of promising. I smiled and started to chuckle. "By 'absolutely amazing,' do you mean ordering a pizza and renting a couple of movies or do you mean that you found where your mum's hidden the key to the liquor cabinet?"

She smiled mischievously. "It could be both. Or it could be something even better."

That made me stop and think. Personally, I wasn't above sneaking a bottle of wine or scotch or something for the three of us to share, as long as it was something that Nina's mum wouldn't miss and we stayed at her house. In my mind, pizza, a good film, and a little alcohol could be the epitome of a great night. But if Nina had something that she thought was 'even better' than that, it probably meant doing something much more adventurous. Which might be really fun, but I didn't care for being grounded on Christmas.

"What does that mean?" I asked carefully.

I was _so _not going to go with them unless they told me what they wanted to do.

"We're not going to tell you," Lizzie said loftily from the bed.

"Why not?" I demanded.

Nina grinned. "Because it's a surprise, silly."

"I am not going to help you get revenge on Tyler for dumping you again," I said automatically. Nina's on-and-off boyfriend of a little more than a year might not have been my favorite person, but I wasn't going to toilet paper his house or something. At least, I refused to do it a third time. I knew that the two of them both loved the drama, but I was getting tired of alternately hearing Nina gush about him, cry over him, and curse him over the phone.

She looked insulted. "As a matter of face, Katherine, I am completely done with that loser." I decided not to point both the fact that my name wasn't Katherine - just Kate - and that she hadn't been done with Tyler the last three times they had broken up. "I haven't even thought about Tyler in days, not since I started going out with Piers."

"Piers _Polkiss?_" I gaped. "When did you start going out with _Piers Polkiss?_"

"Tuesday," she said, tsking. "Which you would know if you ever paid attention when we talk on the phone. I know that you think my life is centered around Tyler, but it's really not."

"I don't like talking over the phone," I muttered, "I like talking face to face. Which reminds me, get your butt off of my desk." She refused to do wordlessly, giggling as she wiggled her behind over my desk. The seven-year-old I babysat was more mature than Nina. "And I am not going with the two of you unless you tell me what we're going to do."

"Call your parents and ask if you can come," Lizzie demanded.

I frowned. "Maybe I will or maybe I won't."

"Why are you being so difficult?" Nina said, pouting. "Come on, just call your parents and ask them. Please, Kate. We're going to have so much fun, and besides, what are you going to be doing in here, anyway? Absolutely nothing except sit and wait for Harry Potter to send you a letter."

That's when it hit me: I needed to get out. If even Nina knew that I was sitting in my room waiting for a letter, I must have been doing this for a very long time. I couldn't just wait for him to write me. I needed to face it: Harry wasn't here, and Harry might not write to me for a while because _Harry had a life. _I needed to follow his example and _get a life. _What was the point of sitting around at home reading a book or watching television, just waiting for him to send me a letter? I needed to go to Nina's house with Lizzie and Ni and get a little tipsy or go do whatever it was that the two of them had planned. If I just sat around and waited, then I was the only person who was really missing out on anything.

I fished my mobile phone (I'd gotten it in October, for my birthday) from my pocket and used the speed dial to call Maria, who never went anywhere without her phone and would answer any time she wasn't at work. Dad almost never answered his; he considered the cell phone the most worthless invention on the face of the planet. As the phone rang, I heard Nina squeal with delight and saw Lizzie grin in pride. Lizzie sat up on the bed and Nina finally got off of my desk and went to sit beside her.

Dad and Maria had gone to the science fair at Alec and Penelope's school, and when Maria answered, I could hear a lot of shouting in the background. "Hello?" she half-yelled into the phone. "Kate? Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, everything is fine, 'Ria," I said. I pushed a lock of hair behind my ear. "Listen, Nina and Lizzie are here right now. Nina's mum is going out tonight, and she told Nina that she could have a few friends stay the night. Do you think that I could go?"

Maria paused thoughtfully for a moment. "I don't see why not, we don't have anything really special planned…Hold on, though, I'd better ask your dad what he thinks first, so that he won't have a fit…"

I covered the mouth of the phone. "I think that I can go. She's just got to ask Dad first, but I'm pretty sure that he's going to say yes…"

"Hey, are you still there?" Maria asked over the receiver. I told her that I was, and she said, "Your dad wants to know what you're going to be doing."

Well, I didn't really know what we would be doing, but I couldn't exactly say that to them. I looked towards Lizzie and Nina, who didn't look nervous at all and instead were laughing at my concern. How nice. "I'm pretty sure that we're going to rent a movie or two and order a pizza," I said, "but I think that we might go bowling or something with a friend of Nina's from Smeltings."

I waited for Maria to relegate this information to Dad for a moment before she got back on the phone. "He says that it's okay, as long as you get back tomorrow before your grandparents come in tomorrow after lunch. Just keep your mobile with you and don't do anything too crazy, alright love?"

"Got it, Maria," I said, giving my best friends a thumb's up. "Tell Daddy that I said thanks. I love you guys."

"We love you, too, Katie. Have a good time tonight, okay?"

"I'm pretty sure that I will. Bye, Maria."

The phone clicked off as Maria hung up. I looked towards Lizzie and Nina for approval.

"You did great, sweetheart," Nina told me, getting off the bed with a grin on her face. Lizzie followed. "Be at my house by six-fifteen with your stuff, 'kay? Then we're going to get ready for some real fun."

I swore that I would be there.

* * *

><p>Just over an hour later, I was standing in Nina's bathroom, cringing at the sight of my own reflection in the mirror. This was…unacceptable. Horrible. I looked wrong, nothing like myself and nothing like anyone I would recognize if I passed her on the street. "I can't go out like this," I told Lizzie and Nina.<p>

"Why not?" Lizzie asked, genuinely curious. She had cleaned up very well; her tight black jeans were set off by her turquoise blue knit top and layers of silver and gold necklaces, and a sequined headband was stuck in her newly-tamed hair. Her make-up was done skillfully done, from her reddish lip gloss to her blue-outlined eyes.

"Because I look like a clown," I told them firmly. I hated wearing make-up; I hated wearing clothes that didn't fit me right. Lizzie's red gloss made me look like my lips were bleeding, Nina had put so much mascara on me that my eyelashes stuck together when I blinked, and the spots of pink blush on my cheeks made me look like a cartoon character. My friends were great at putting make-up on themselves; they sucked at putting it on other people.

"No you don't," Nina said, waving away my complaints as she grabbed her coat from the rack by the front door. "You look like a normal teenage girl. You look sixteen, not ten. For once." Nina herself was wearing a purple dress that made her look exotic and beautiful, with her hair in sleek curls pinned up nicely and her features highlight by make up that made her look even more dramatic than usual, if at all possible.

"But I don't like wearing these clothes." The only things I would be wearing to the party that actually belonged to me were my jacket and my shoes. Lizzie's pistachio green blouse looked good with Nina's rose and leaf patterned skirt, but the top was too low cut for my comfort and the skirt was sort of short, even with my loaned white tights.

They hadn't told me that we would be going to a party, so I hadn't known to bring my own clothes, and Nina said that I didn't have time to go home before her friend would come and pick us up for the party, anyway. So I now I was wearing other people's clothes

"Well, we don't have time for you to change clothes," Lizzie informed me, giving me a devious grin as she slipped on her sock. "The party starts at seven thirty. Our ride's going to be here any minute."

Our ride, Kyle, was a boy from Stonewall a year above ours. He, apparently, had just gotten a driver's license and was borrowing his older brother's car to pick us up. The walk wouldn't have been very long, since Piers lived on Wisteria, but Lizzie had asked Kyle to drive us so we wouldn't have to walk. She really liked Kyle; she liked his haircut (which I thought was weird) and his clothes (which I thought made him look like a punk) and she liked his jokes (which weren't really my kind of humor). But whatever; he was pretty nice, and even if riding with him would be a little awkward, maybe he and Lizzie could get together or something. And then maybe she and Nina would be so busy with their boyfriends that they would leave me alone about not having one…

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Of course, I also became more aware that I really didn't have a positive attitude about this at all. But whatever.

Kyle came and picked us up a few minutes later, and within ten minutes, we were pulling into Piers Polkiss' driveway. From the moment I stepped outside of the car, I could hear the music booming inside; I took a deep breath, forced a grin, and stepped inside the party. Inside, the lights had been turned low, and some dance song that I'd never heard before blasted its way through a set of speakers that I couldn't locate immediately. It wasn't a very big party, but there were at least thirty people in the room and they were all shouting over each in their conversations. I didn't really know anyone, or at least I didn't know anyone; it was obvious to me that Nina had convinced Piers to invite me, for whatever reason. These weren't really the kinds of people that I hung around with; a lot of them were okay, but some of them set me on edge.

Nina and Lizzie disappeared into the crowd almost immediately, leaving me standing by the door uncomfortably. Feeling a little overwhelmed, I waded my way towards the kitchen, where the music was much quieter and the bar was loaded with sodas and snacks. The kitchen was almost empty, except for me and three other people. Two of them, a boy with crew-cut blonde hair and a girl with a dark brown pixie-cut whose faces I couldn't see, were standing in the corner beside the refrigerator, snogging in a way that can only be described as vigorous. The other was a boy, who looked up at me as I came to stand across the bar from him; he seemed familiar, like a lot of the Smeltings kids, but I couldn't remember his name.

The boy smiled almost unconsciously, looking me over curiously. He had a thin, friendly face and shaggy dark hair, with freckles all over his face and cheerful hazel eyes. His smile was slightly crooked, the kind that made me want to smile back at him. "Are you hungry?" he asked casually.

"Nah," I said, tucking my hair behind my ear. "I'm just trying to…get used to the noise level. I thought I'd try to take it in moderation."

"Oh. I understand. These things can get sort of loud." He grabbed a soda from a package on the bar. "Do you want a drink?"

"Maybe not a soda," I said, wrinkling my nose at the limited selection. I didn't know where the Coca-Cola and the Sprite had gone (there were empty packages from them lying in the floor), but all that was left was grape soda and root beer. Yuck, my two least favorites. "But, um, is the punch any good?" There was a small punchbowl, probably something Piers' mum had fixed up, filled with a reddish-pink something.

"I dunno. It's got chunks of strawberry in it." I probably didn't look enlightened, so he went a little further. "I'm allergic. They give me hives."

I felt bad for him, which meant that I had to say so. "Oh, that stinks. I love strawberries."

"Almost everyone does." He chuckled, a little awkwardly. "Do you want me to get you a cup?" He motioned to a stack of red, plastic cups, located on his side of the bar, and the punch server dipped in the bowl.

"Please. Just don't accidentally drink any of it, please," I said. "I don't want to have to call an ambulance." I was only half-joking; it would be just my luck for him to accidentally spill it on himself and then lick his fingers or something.

"I'll be careful, I promise." He poured a little pinkish liquid into the cup and handed it to me over the counter. I took a big sip right away; it was really good, even if it had a bit of an aftertaste I couldn't place. "I'm Noah, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Noah," I replied, trying not to spit my drink on his as I swallowed fast. "My name's Kate Foster."

"Oh, yeah?" He looked remotely interested. "I think we were in the same class in primary school."

"There was a Noah in my class, until I was like eleven," I told him, not really sure if he was serious or not. Well, if he was kidding, that was one of the weirdest pick-up lines I had ever heard. "Noah Collins. I think he moved to…Wales?" That sounded right. The teacher had been upset, because he had been one of her special favorites, and we'd had a going away party which may or may not have included cupcakes, depending on how accurate my memory was.

"I think that he went to Cardiff," Noah informed me, raising an eyebrow, "and I think that he came back. And that he's standing in front of you right now."

I downed the second half of my punch, then wiped my mouth. "In that case, Noah Collins from Cardiff, could you get me some more punch? I think I like it." I grinned and held out my cup. He smiled grandly and held out the dipper.

"My pleasure, Kate Foster from London."

"You remember that? When I moved in?" I asked, genuinely surprised. Sometimes, I barely even remembered that I used to live in London; Little Whinging was one the kind of place that did that to you. Noah gave what was probably meant to be a shrug as he refilled my cup and grinned at me.

"I have a good memory," he said offhandedly. Suddenly, he looked sort of bashful, and I realized that bashful looked good on him. "Do you want to go dance? With me, I mean?"

I took another sip of my punch thoughtfully. This was something new; I had never, ever been to a party like this before, and school dances had always been more of an occasion to stand around awkwardly than to actually dance. Did I even know how to dance? Hmm, I wasn't sure. But a look over my shoulder at the party made me rethink it; those kids didn't really seem to be doing any particular kind of dancing, just sort of moving their hips or their butts in sync with their partners. It didn't look that hard, and besides, wasn't I here to do that kind of thing?

"Yeah, I think I do," I told Noah, setting my cup down on the corner of the bar. "Let's go. It'll be fun." He beamed at me brightly as he emerged from behind the bar, and I let him lead me back into the throng of people.

* * *

><p>Someone had spiked the punch.<p>

This thought hit me after three or four cups of the stuff, during breaks from dancing with Noah and chatting with people that I didn't know well. I suddenly knew the aftertaste that I hadn't been able to place was alcohol, probably whiskey or vodka or some kind of fruit-flavored drink. I wondered why I hadn't thought of it sooner; this was a party at _Piers Polkiss' _house, which of course meant that something would be spiked. Maybe that was why I just kept wanting to drink more of it, and maybe that explained why I was starting to get a headache. Oh, duh. Why hadn't I seen this coming?

I laughed out loud, which made Noah look up at me strangely. "What's so funny?" he called over the music.

"Nothing," I lied, grinning at him. This boy, I was starting to think, was perfect: he was sweet, he was funny, he was cute. He could dance really well, too, or at least I thought he was dancing well; how was I supposed to know? I didn't know how to dance, and I might have possibly been a little drunk. But I did know that I liked Noah, that I wanted him to come closer to me - which meant that I reached out and grabbed his hands.

"What're you doing?"

I laughed. "Nothing," I told him. "Just come here, would you?" Noah opened his mouth, like he was going to say something, but my hazy mind just didn't want to listen; instead, it convinced me to wrap my arms around his neck and tilt his face towards mine. "I'm going to give you something now," I told him, smiling in a way that I thought would come across as coy, "so just close your eyes…"

"Kate," Noah said, looking a little uneasy, "are you sure about-"

"What the fuck are you doing?" came a loud voice, just as someone pulled me away from Noah by the collar of my shirt.

I whirled angrily on the speaker, fighting back the urge to slap whoever it was that had interrupted my move. It was a good thing that I didn't, because I found my self starring almost a foot upward into the face of Dudley Dursley. Harry's cousin scowled at me. Dudley was very tall and had lost a lot of weight in the last few years, but he was still huge due to sheer height and muscle. Harry had told me, during some random conversation we had had that summer or the previous one, that Dudley had taken up boxing, but my brain was just too fuzzy for that really to register at the moment.

"I think I'm the one that should be asking that, thanks," I said hotly.

Dudley grunted, grabbing my shoulder in one of his large, beefy hands. He shoved me towards the front door. "Me and you are going to have a fucking talk."

I didn't protest as we went to the door, probably because it was taking most of my energy not to trip over my own feet as we went into the freezing night air, but once we were down the front steps, I felt prepared to let him have it. "Who do you think you are? Why did you get in the way?"

"Because I'm not going to watch my cousin's girl fucking molest the Collins kid," Dudley said. His voice was really deep, so that it was almost hard for me to understand what he was saying (or then again, that could've been the alcohol), but when I did, all of my anger evaporated into shock.

"You think I'm your cousin's girl?" I said. I sounded stupefied. "You're talking about Harry, right? Harry and me?"

"You must think I'm really dumb," Dudley said angrily. "Maybe I'm not real smart, but I'm not fucking blind. You and my cousin were together all summer."

I giggled, almost hysterically. "You think I'm Harry's girl."

"I saw the way that you two acted together. Yeah, you're Harry's girl, and you're acting like a fucking whore." Dudley frowned so that a little line appeared in between his eyebrows.

"I am not acting like a whore!" I shouted at him, in disbelief.

"Yeah, you are! Wearing clothes like that, and all that bloody make-up! And you were throwing yourself at Evans," Dudley said, his face turning red. "Harry doesn't deserve that, and we both know it."

Suddenly, I just felt tired. "I'm not Harry's girl, Dudley."

"Don't lie to me. I'm not stupid." His face was starting to turn purple.

"Oh, I'm so sorry for lying, Dudley. You're right. Yeah, _of course _I'm Harry's girlfriend," I said sarcastically, injecting acid into all of my words. "_That's _why he hasn't written me in a month! _That's _why he lies to me and keeps secrets from me and he acts like I'm a _bloody nuisance_! It's because we're a couple! Because he _loves _me as much as I love him!" I laughed bitterly. "Yeah, I'm Harry's girl all right. But Harry isn't here, is he? He's at bloody Hogwarts!"

"You're pissed," Dudley told me dully. He looked sort of insulted and a bit disgusted. "You need to go the fuck home." He turned and grabbed the door handle, then slipped back into the dark party. It didn't close all the way.

"Yeah, I think I will!" I called to no one in particular, just as I turned to trudge back down the street and towards Magnolia Crescent.

"Kate, wait!" came a voice, and I turned just in time to see Noah bolting up the street after me. I stopped and did what I was told. He stopped in front of me, looking me over with concern. "Are you okay? You're crying."

"I-I am?" I squeaked, hurriedly wiping my hands across my face. They came back wet. "I didn't even notice."

"You aren't really going to walk all the way back to your house, are you?" Noah asked curiously.

I nodded. "It's not very far, and I think I just need to go home and go to bed," I told him miserably. I didn't even want to go back to Nina's; she and Lizzie definitely weren't ready to leave, from what I had seen of their activities. "I'm so sorry for what happened in there. I didn't mean for you to be involved in anything like that, I just wanted to have a good time. I didn't want to embarrass you or make you feel uncomfortable. I just thought that you were sweet and cute and I thought kissing you might be a good idea for some reason. Please don't hate me because I'm socially screwed up."

Noah looked at me thoughtfully, then smiled. "No, I don't think that's a good enough reason to hate someone. Especially not someone like you. Do you want me to walk you home? I don't think it's a good idea for you to go by yourself when you're so upset."

So I agreed to letting him walk me home and I agreed to letting him grab my jacket for me and let Lizzie and Nina know where I was going. Noah didn't ask me any questions about Harry or Dudley or if I had a boyfriend on the walk home. He just walked beside me and made small talk about stuff nobody actually cares about, which I appreciated more than anything that anyone could have done at that moment. And when we finally reached my doorstep, I gave him a hug and my phone number.

* * *

><p>Harry finally sent me a letter on Christmas day, just a simple 'Happy Christmas' message with his name signed on the bottom. He also enclosed a charm, for a necklace or a bracelet, carved out of pale wood in the shape of an owl that eerily resembled Hedwig. It was the strangest thing - sometimes, I could almost swear that it blinked at me.<p>

* * *

><p><em><strong>Here's another question for readers: what kind of romantic attraction can you see between Harry and Kate so far? I've attempted to make it very subtle, but I'm afraid that it's so subtle that I'm going to need to change the story to some other category...<strong>_


	7. The Woeful Summer of 1997, Part I

**_I'm very, very sorry about the late state of this chapter; gah, it's been more than a month. But's it's been a fairly hectic month, so I beg your apologies. _**

**_Disclaimer: I, abbyepic, do not own the _Harry Potter _series, nor do I make any money off of this fan-based work. __I only own the events and original characters of this work, _Hero Complex_. Please do not sue me. _  
><strong>

* * *

><p>"I'll miss you, Kate."<p>

"I'll miss you, too," I said into the mouth of my mobile phone. I twirled a lock of hair around my finger absently as I mused. "Is it some kind of requirement that nearly everyone that I want to spend time with goes away during the summer? It isn't fair."

In the last few years, all of my friends going away for the summer was becoming some kind of tradition. I really shouldn't have been surprised that it would apply to my first boyfriend, too. Still, it was one of those things that I tended to want to pout and whine about. Lizzie, Nina, and now Noah, too - it was hard not to feel like they were abandoning me to a summer in Little Whinging while they went off on adventures in other places. I wanted them to have a good time during their holidays, but I wanted to be part of their good times. It definitely made it hard to feel happy about sending them all around the bloody world.

Noah, on the other end of our conversation, paused for a moment. I heard the muffled sound of someone coming in over a speaker and knew what was coming almost immediately. "I've got to go. My plane's starting to board. I'll call you when we land in Hong Kong. Love you, Katie."

"Bye, Noah. I love you, too." The call clicked off almost as soon as I said the words, and I honestly hoped that Noah hadn't noticed the short pause before I had said the three magic words.

Noah had first said those three words to me in March, only two months after we had started going out, and at the time I had had a hard time saying them back. I didn't, anymore - but at the same time, I wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. I thought that maybe, just maybe, Noah and I were trying to hurry the relationship a little too much. But I had had been in a romantic relationship before; maybe I was just clueless about how these things were supposed to work out. The only romantic relationships I had ever observed before were the ones between my dad and mum and Dad and Maria, which I figured were on a different scale than a teenage romance. I could've been wrong, though.

The whole thing made me very uncomfortable. At least we didn't have any sappy pet names for each other; if Noah took to calling me 'pet' or 'love,' I would probably loose it.

I threw myself down on the sofa and stared at the beige ceiling of my living room, thinking about how weird it was to be in a relationship. I was sixteen and I had a boyfriend that I might love. It almost blew my mind.

I laid there for a while like that and allowed the quiet in my house and the comfort of the sofa to almost lure me to sleep. It was time for an afternoon nap.

The peace didn't last for long. Within minutes, someone was pounding their fist loudly against the front door. Feeling a little annoyed, I stood up, stretched, and went to see who the hell was interrupting my almost-nap. I looked through the peephole - it was just high enough that I had to lean up to see - and almost squealed. Immediately, I undid the lock and swung the door open.

"Harry!" I cheered, launching myself out the door and throwing my arms around him as I hugged him. It only lasted for a few seconds before I pulled away and beamed at him, but it gave me a little tingling feeling that made me shiver. I tried not to let on. "When did you get back?"

He hadn't written me in three weeks, hadn't even mentioned when he might be home. In fact, I really hadn't expected him to be back for another week or so.

"Today," Harry said, in a tired voice. It was his tone that made me look at him a little harder. There were dark circles under his eyes and he looked pale and drawn, like he hadn't eaten or slept in days. I resisted the urge to fix his crooked glasses, which he didn't seem to notice, and to smooth his black hair, which looked even more messy than usual. He gave off the general impression that he had sleep in his clothes and not combed his hair. "We were let out of school a bit early this year," he continued.

Harry looked different in a way that I couldn't put my finger on. He didn't look sullen or moody or even emotionless, like he had when he had arrived home last year. He actually just looked sad. Or maybe the better word would be that he looked a little bit hopeless.

"What's the matter, Harry?" I asked softly. He looked like he might have been sick, or like something horrible had happened. My stomach turned uneasily. I couldn't help but worry about him, when he looked at me like this. His eyes, the same impossible shade of green as ever, looked horribly dull.

"Professor Dumbledore is dead," he told me flatly.

"Oh. That's horrible." I was sorry to hear that. He had seemed like such a nice old man, and it had been obvious to me that he and Harry had been close through the letters I'd gotten over the year. I really would have liked to meet him again, but I supposed that it just wasn't meant to be. "But you know, Harry, he was really old, and sometimes, old people just…" I started slowly, not sure where I was really going with this.

Harry scoffed. "He didn't die of old age, Kate. And before you ask, he wasn't sick, either, and he didn't have a heart attack or something."

Admittedly, I was slightly perplexed.. "Then how did he die?"

"He was murdered," Harry said frankly. "Snape killed him."

"Snape, your science teacher?" I was shocked. Yeah, Harry complained a lot about Professor Snape, his absolute least favorite teacher, from what I'd learned through his letters. He ranted and raved about how cruel and unfair he was, but it was a long jump from being an unfair professor to being a murderer. "Why would he want to kill the headmaster? I don't understand."

"You'd understand, if you knew who Snape really works for," Harry muttered darkly.

I blinked. "Well, if he's a teacher, I think he probably works for the headmaster, right? Unless you've got some sort of mafia set up at your school, but that doesn't seem very-"

"Never mind," he interrupted, before looking up at me almost sharply. I bit my lip, deciding that commenting on his strange behavior was probably not in my best interest.

Since he had left last summer, so many of Harry's letters had been like this conversation - cryptic, like there was something he was trying to tell me but couldn't. I didn't like it at all, but there really wasn't much that I could do about it except maybe blow up like I had last year, which I really didn't want to do. I didn't want Harry to be mad at me; I just wanted him to trust me enough to tell me what was really going on. I hated knowing that he felt like he had to tell me secrets and lies, for whatever reason, but… I hated the idea of loosing him even more. Which meant that I would have to keep my lips zipped and not say a thing.

"Do you want to go for a walk?" I asked, feeling just a little hesitant. He nodded silently, and I finally pulled the front door closed. I forced myself to smile. "Let's go, then."

We walked towards the park, an overwhelming sense of déjà vu spreading over me. A little over a year before, I had been doing the same thing: making small talk about my school and my family and my friends, pretending to be happy and cheerful and not at all affected by Harry's mood. It was one of the hardest things I had done in a long time, and this was only his first day back.

Oh, hell.

* * *

><p>"What did the digital clock say to the grandfather clock?"<p>

Harry looked up at me suddenly, as if he hadn't been aware that I was even there. Which was weird, because I'd been sitting on the swing beside him for half an hour, watching him stare at the dirt he kicked up with his dusty sneakers. It was two weeks and a half weeks after he had come back, and for two and a half weeks, I had been dutifully walking to the park with him every day, just to watch something like this happen. I was surprised that I had held out so long without going crazy, unless I was already crazy. Harry was certainly looking at me like I was.

"What?" His mouth fell open with a tiny pop.

"What did the digital clock say to the grandfather clock?" I repeated, slowly and carefully. It was the type of joke that I would get off of one of my siblings' television shows or a box of cereal. I had no idea where it had come from. "You know. It's a joke."

He shook his head, going back to tired-emotionless-Harry-mode. Ugh. "I don't know, Kate."

"It said, 'Look, Grandpa! No hands!'" I grinned cheesily, trying hard not to falter at his expressionless expression. "Do you get it? Because digital clocks don't have hands?" I pushed my arms close to my body and wiggled my fingers at him. "No hands?"

He blinked at me blankly. "Yeah. I guess."

"I might have given that one away too fast," I paused, fishing around in my mind for another joke to tell. While doing so, I finally stopped wiggling my fingers. I thought that I must be starting to look ridiculous. "Okay, I'll give you a make-up joke. What did the pony say when he had a sore throat?"

"I don't know, Kate, but I'm sure that you're going to tell me," Harry said stonily.

I shook my head briskly. "That's not how jokes work, Harry. I ask you a joke. You give me a half-hearted guess. I tell you the right answer, and then you laugh. After that, I tell you another joke. And the process repeats itself. But before it can do that, you have to give it a try. So come on. What did the pony say when it had a sore throat?"

Harry stopped, as if he was seriously considering my joke. "I dunno. 'Neigh?'"

"No, because this is a joke." I made an insulted face. ""It said, 'I'm a little hoarse.' Do you get it?" I gave him another fake smile, which was probably less authentic than the first. I could feel my enthusiasm level dropping by the second. "Do you get it?"

"Yeah, Kate, I get it."

"Okay, so I'll do another one," I started, pausing to think. "Okay, Harry. What's a bear called without teeth?"

He said nothing for a long minute, which meant that I would have to give the answer. "It's a gummy bear! Do you get it?" He said nothing. "Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine! Do you get it?" He said nothing. "Why did the blonde throw the clock out the window? Because she wanted to see time fly! Do you get-"

"Yes, I get it! Why won't you just shut up already?" Harry snapped, his face pink, his eyes burning behind his glasses. I made a slight squeaking noise as my eyes widened at him.

Neither of us spoke for a long moment.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly after about two minutes of silence. "I didn't mean to annoy you."

He made a grunting noise and looked back to the ground. Something inside me stirred unpleasantly. Seeing him like this made me feel helpless; it was a feeling that I was starting to associate, somewhere deep inside, with that hollow look that Harry had had in his eyes this summer and last summer. I wanted so badly to make it better, yet I knew that I couldn't make anything better. And it seemed like all that I was doing was annoying him, which made me feel even worse.

"Look at me, Harry," I commanded suddenly. I sounded loud, almost angry. He didn't right away, which made me sigh and say, in a gentler tone, "Harry, please don't stare at the ground anymore. Please look at me."

He did, and I could just barely resist the urge to reach out and hug him. He looked like he was done being angry; his face actually reminded me of the dog, whenever someone refused to give him a bite of our dinner. I didn't think that he would want me to hug him, though, so I reached out slowly and put my hand on his arm. It was all instinct; someone in me wanted to reach out to him. He didn't even flinch at our contact, which I took as a good sign.

"Harry," I said softly, "if you want me to leave you alone, I will." _Even if I don't want to. _"I'll go home. I won't follow you here anymore. Or, if you want me to, I just won't talk. At all. It's just that I'm worried about you.

"I'm sorry, Kate," he sighed. He looked so tired. "I didn't mean to snap at you, it's just that…"

"I know, I know." I shrugged, moving my hand off of his arm slowly. "Things are complicated. They always are, with you," I told him, a bit ruefully. I didn't even feel bad for saying it; it was just so true.

And I definitely didn't feel bad when Harry started to laugh. At first, it was a quiet chuckle, but it got a little louder and a little louder until it was loud enough to make the kids playing in the sandbox a few feet away look up. I smiled, despite my best efforts not to. It was just so nice to hear him laugh; the sound was so rare. And he looked better when he laughed, too. His eyes started to glow and his teeth looked especially white, and he gave the impression of actually being a happy person. I didn't think that I had seen him laugh since he had come home. When his laugh settled down, there was a moment in which Harry Potter beamed at me.

It was so amazing to see that it sent a shiver down my spine.

It was, at that very moment, that I really understood exactly what made me want to hear that laugh and see that smile again, even if I wouldn't admit it.

"Tomorrow," I heard myself saying, "we're going to do something different. Something other than coming here or walking around aimlessly. We're going to do something fun tomorrow, do you hear me? Something _fun_. And you are going to _enjoy it_."

"What're we going to do?" Harry asked me; he was obviously humoring me, which made me feel a little peeved. It was like he didn't think that I could make him have fun. How annoying.

"I dunno yet," I told him, smiling brightly. "But you had better come prepared. Bring money, if you've got any. And be at my house by nine-thirty. Nine-thirty sharp, mind you. Alright?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Fine. Whatever you say, Kate."

I grinned. "Keep that attitude, dear, and we'll be just fine."

* * *

><p>Harry was, somewhat predictably, five minutes late the next morning, and entered my living room with a frown on his face, which I also found quite predictable. It didn't matter, anyway, because I was prepared to smile confidently at him as I stepped out the door and into the fresh morning air. I greeted him with a cheerful 'good morning' as I slipped my house key into my pocket. For a moment, as I jiggled the door handle to be sure that it was properly locked, before, satisfied, I turned around and beamed at him.<p>

"Are you ready?" I asked; I sounded happy, probably because I was.

"I guess so," Harry said, looking at me dubiously. "What's the plan, Kate?"

"Well, right now we're going to go get breakfast at the bakery," I said, referring to the same bakery that I had been dragging him to every few days for the last two summers, "and then we're going to go see a film."

"A film?" Harry raised his eyebrows at me. "What kind of film?"

I smiled brightly. "The new Disney movie. _Hercules._" I started down the walk towards the front gate, but Harry didn't move. When I realized that he wasn't following, I turned. "Is something wrong?"

"Do we have to go watch a cartoon? Isn't there some other movie that you would rather see?"

"Not with you," I remarked, sounding somewhat snide. There wasn't much on at the theater currently; excluding Hercules, the choices were between a few sappy romantic comedies, a horror film, and some kind of biographical documentary. I actually did want to see the romantic movies, but they weren't the sort of things I would want to watch with Harry; I'd rather watch them with Noah, or with Lizzie and Nina, or even with Maria and Penelope. The biography had looked boring, and the horror movie didn't appeal to me at all.

I checked my tone. "Actually, I really want to go see _Hercules. _Please, Harry. I bet that you'll like it, after we see it."

"Aren't we a little old for cartoons?" Harry asked dryly.

"You can never be too old for Disney, Harry." I told him, trying my best to sound introspective and wise.

He looked silently at me for a long moment, but he sighed and started walking after me after a minute just like I'd known he would.

Four hours later, I was beaming with delight as Harry and I filed out of the dark theater and into the brightly lit cinema, just behind a woman grasping the hands of her two children.

"That was so good!" I squealed to him happily, as I fished my mobile phone out of my pocket. I had gotten in for my birthday, last October; it was mostly a small, thinnish red box with buttons on the front, a tiny green display screen, and a little antenna. I tuned it off of its silent mode before tucking it back into my pocket and looking back at Harry. "Didn't you like it, Harry?"

He shrugged. "It was fine."

"You just didn't get into it like I did," I said dismissively. When watching movies, I tended to get rather…involved. Even watching a cartoon, I would squeak and whimper at appropriate moments like a small child. It was somewhat embarrassing, but I had long since accepted the fact. "I think I actually appreciate kiddie films and fairy tales more now than I did when I was little, you know? Something about growing up makes them seem all the more magical and lovely…"

"'Magical?'" Harry looked amused.

"Yeah, magical." I smiled at him. "They're filled with adventure and love and magic, and no matter how scary the bad guy is, the good guy always wins. There's always a happily ever after. I think that real life should be like that, too."

"You're right. It should be," he said quietly. He was looking at my face with a strange sort of focus, like he was trying to memorize it or something. I felt myself flush, and I threw our uneaten popcorn into the rubbish bin as we got closer to the door. Just as Harry grasped the door handle to pull it open, my mobile started to ring.

"One minute, Harry," I said, pulling it out. The display said, in blocky letters, _NOAH. _I smiled as I hit the answer call button. "Hello? Noah?"

"Kate. Hey." I could practically hear the smile in his voice, which made my grin larger. It was nice to have a boyfriend who liked you so much.

"Hi. What's going on?" I asked.

"Not much. I was a bit bored, so I thought that I should call you and run up the phone bill a bit before we go out to dinner. What're you doing?"

"My friend and I just got out of the cinema. We went to see that new Disney movie, and I think that we're going to go get lunch somewhere now. How's everything in Hong Kong? Do your parents know that you're costing them a fortune right now?"

Noah had called me all of three times since he had left: once when his family's flight had landed in Hong Kong and once a week after that. His parents were giving him limited minutes on the mobile because they (quite reasonably) didn't want to pay for the outrageous long-distance charges. My parents felt the same, so I wasn't allowed to call him, either.

"Yeah, they know. They're watching me right now, as a matter of fact. Dad's pointing at his watch." Noah and I laughed; his father was infamously impatient. "And the city's amazing, especially right now. I know that I told you last time, but the city is beautiful at night. I wish you were here to see it."

"Me, too," I admitted into the phone, "almost as much as I wish you were here right now."

If Noah was there, I could have had the best of both worlds. I could have him and Harry, standing beside each other. I wondered if they would like each other, if they would be friends.

"I'll bring back lots of pictures, though," he assured me, "and I've got you a special souvenir. I think you'll love it."

"Noah, you don't have to get anything for me," I said quietly.

"I wanted to, though. I saw it and it made me think of you," Noah told me; I could picture his face, the way his hazel eyes would be shining right at that moment. Noah was the type of boy who was almost overly romantic; he was his happiest, I realized, when he was making throwing himself out there to me.

In the background of the call, I could hear the sounds of a busy city, and then I heard what I was sure was Mrs. Collins' voice telling Noah to get off of the phone. He confirmed as much.

"Kate, I've got to go. I just thought that I would call and say that I miss you. I love you, Kate."

Like always, the words sent a chill up my spine that wasn't entirely pleasant.

"I miss you, too, and I love you. Talk to you later, Noah."

"Bye, Katie."

I hung up the phone and turned around to face Harry; he was looking at me darkly, like he was angry with me. "What?" I asked, shifting uncomfortably under his gaze.

"You never told me that you had a boyfriend."

"Why does that matter?" I asked, feeling a little dumbfounded. "Was I supposed to tell you that I have a boyfriend?"

He looked at me, his eyes narrowed behind his glasses, and very plainly said, "Yes."

"Alright, then. I'll tell you all about him." I didn't see what the big deal was, and I thought that I could fix it easily. "His name is Noah Collins. We were in primary school together until he moved to Cardiff with his family for his dad's job. He moved back last year; we met at a party last Christmas. We've been going out since January. He has dark brown hair, freckles, and hazel eyes. He's tall, plays football, and he goes to Smeltings. Right now, he, his parents, and his older sister are in Hong Kong because of his dad's work. Oh, and he's allergic to strawberries."

"And he loves you," Harry said, the words coming out uncertainly.

"Yes. He loves me," I affirmed. My own certainty surprised me.

"And you love him?"

This time I paused. "I think that I do," I said softly. This conversation was too close to my own thoughts lately.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me about him?"

"I didn't know that I needed to!" I said defensively, my face burning hotly. "And who the hell do you think you are, Harry Potter, getting on to _me _about not telling _you_ something?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Harry muttered, turning away from me and slipping out the door. Well, since I had already started getting angry, I wasn't about to finish. I hurried after him and caught him walking down the sidewalk and looking at the ground. He looked like he was hardly controlling his temper.

"Like hell you don't know what I'm talking about!" I shouted at him. He stopped, but he didn't turn around. "I'm not that dense, Harry. I know that you keep secrets from me, and lots of them!"

He finally turned. "Oh, you do?" he asked snidely.

"Yeah, I do!" I yelled hotly. "Did you really think that you could just lie to me forever? I looked up your school on the internet. I couldn't find out anything about it! What sort of school is so remote that the post doesn't even run there, anyway? And the secrets that you keep! I'm so tired of them! Like the scar on your hand, the one that says 'I must not tell lies.' How the hell did you get a scar that like that? And your strange stories, about your parents and your friends and your teachers! They only barely make sense, you know!"

I walked right up to him and stuck my finger in his chest. "How does it make you feel that I didn't tell you something, Harry? Does it feel bad? I feel like that _every time _you say some cryptic remark, every time your letters sound like a secret code! I care about you, Harry, I won't lie about that, but I'm so _sick_ of all of your lies and secrets and your moods!"

I took a step backwards away from him as I felt my eyes start to water.

"Kate-" Harry called after me, taking a step forward. He didn't look so angry anymore; there was an odd look on his face, introspective and sort of heavy.

"Save it, Harry. Save it for someone who wants to hear your lies," I told him, spinning around and hurrying down the street.

* * *

><p><strong><em>This brings me to note that, after this chapter, there will be only two more installments in 'Hero Complex,' including the epilogue-esque last chapter. But, disapointted fans, don't fret - there will be a sequel.<br>_**


	8. The Woeful Summer of 1997, Part II

_**[insert standard disclaimer here]**_

**_Fun Fact: I thought of the idea for this story almost two years ago; I wrote about four drafts of the first chapter and deleted them all because I couldn't get into the story and thought no one would like it. Kind of funny, since this story has sixty five reviews as of its seventh chapter. _**

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><p>"<em>Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting." <em>

- J.M. Barrie, _Peter Pan_

* * *

><p>I avoided Harry for three days, hiding in my house like a scared child. I wasn't actually scared, or at least that's what I told myself. I just couldn't seem to make myself go downstairs during any time when I thought that Harry might wind up knocking on my door. So I stayed in my room during most of the day, sleeping later than I had in a long time and generally wasting time. For the first time since I'd known him, I actually did not want to see Harry Potter. Something had changed in our relationship, and I didn't know what to do about it.<p>

The morning of the fourth day, however, I woke up early enough to watch the morning news with my father and stepmother. It was a normal part of their daily routine that I usually joined them for, but I hadn't since Harry and I had our little tussle. I sat beside Dad and listened to the collection of news anchors talk. I noticed that there had been another freak landslide in the countryside, which baffled scientists and killed a dozen people. It was business as per usual, though; for the last year or so, the news had been a little depressing, due to the strings of strange murders and unfortunate natural disasters.

I felt like there was something wrong about the whole thing, but I keep my lips sealed through the news. When it was over, I went upstairs and got dressed before returning to help Maria finish our breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon. Alec and Penelope came down stairs within minutes of when we finished, as if they had some sort of sense for when would be the best time to come for food. While they shoveled down their breakfast, Dad finished reading the newspaper and tossed it onto the kitchen counter and then left to go to work. Maria didn't have work that day and planned to take Alec and Penelope on a trip to visit her parents two towns over, which I had opted out of.

Maria wanted to leave just after lunchtime, which meant that I would be spending some time with my family before they left. After breakfast was cleaned up, Alec and Pen starting dogging me about playing a game of Scrabble with them. I had been refusing to play their newest favorite with them for days, mostly because I hated how argument-prone they tended to become while playing. They had gotten better about the whole thing in the last two years, but they were both so competitive it made me want to scream.

I just given in and sat with them at the kitchen table (after forty-five of begging, threats, and general irritation) when the doorbell rang. Maria, who had been leafing through the pages of her gardening magazine in the living room, through down the book and started to the front door. I barely resisted the urge to run to the stairs. Instead, I froze in the midst of pulling out my letter tiles and stared at the door. When she opened it, Maria held the door at an angle that wouldn't let me see the person's face. I could only see a slight silhouette, but it was so terribly familiar that I knew instantly who it must be.

"Oh, _crap_," I muttered, twisting in my seat in an attempt to get a better view.

My siblings had no idea what I was doing. "Kate, hurry up, we don't have all day," Penelope nagged. When she realized I wasn't paying attention, she tapped me on the arm. "Hey, Kate, I said to hurry up!"

Maria and the person at the door were talking. I could only hear patches of what they were saying but I saw Maria nodded vigorously and smile. A feeling of dread sent shivers down my spine, and I was just pushing my chair away from the table in an attempt to sneak away when Maria turned around.

Drat, I was caught.

"Kate, sweetheart, someone's here to see you," she said, in a sing-song voice. I barely repressed a groan and my shoulders slumped. Maria quirked an eyebrow, but otherwise didn't say anything. "He says that he has something important to tell you."

"Can you tell him I'm not here?" I said in a stage-whisper.

"No," Maria mouthed, before making an exaggerated pointing gesture from me to the door. I sighed loudly and trudged slowly to the door. As immature and silly as it was, I felt like I was on my way to a funeral.

Harry, for his part, looked like was at a funeral - which, sadly, was none too surprising. As per usual, he was a dishelmed mess: wrinkled clothes, crooked glasses, hair reminiscent of a someone who had just gotten out of bed. As per usual, something inside me tightened oddly at the sight of him. As per usual, he made my thoughts swerve in strange directions that they wouldn't go in unless he was around. Today, these thoughts went towards his unusual expression of grim determination. What were his thoughts and his plans?

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked him directly in the eyes. "Hello, Harry," I said slowly. I was doing my very best to sound neutral and undisturbed by his presence. It was easier said than done. "How can I help you today?"

Maria gave the two of us an odd, appraising look before she went to the kitchen to take my place at the table.

Harry shifted uncomfortably but seemed to hold his ground. "Kate, we need to talk."

"About what?" I bit back the urge to add _Your lies or your secrets?_

I had expected him to back down, but he didn't. "About the truth," he said in a low voice. "You were right about me having secrets. I think it's time for you to hear the truth."

My jaw dropped in disbelief, but I somehow pulled it back into a proper position. "Maria, I'm going for a walk! If I'm not back when you leave, don't lock me out."

"No promises, dear!" she called from the kitchen. Any other day, I might have stuck my tongue out at her. Today, I waved slightly and walked out the door.

"I'm ready now," I informed Harry, pushing my feet against the ground just slightly so that my park swing started to sway. Harry actually wasn't swinging. He was standing in front of my with his hands shoved into the pockets of jeans, looking uncertain. "You can start telling me the truth now, Harry. If that's your real name."

"Oh, it's my real name," he muttered. He cast a look around the park, apparently looking for something suspicious. "Sometimes I wish that it wasn't, but it is. Alright, Kate, before I start, you have to promise that you'll wait until I'm finished before you say anything."

I blinked. "Okay. Start talking, you."

Harry looked me straight in the eyes, took a deep breath, and started by saying four little words.

"I'm a wizard, Kate." I almost fell out of my swing, but before I had opened my mouth, Harry shook his head at me vigorously. "You promised, Kate. Not a word."

I narrowed my eyes at him, but I didn't comment.

He continued quickly. "Er, yeah, so anyway, I'm a wizard. Magic is…Well, it isn't just something in those movies that you like so much. It's real. There are wizards and witches who can really cast spells and do potions. There really are unicorns and dragons and elves and goblins. There's a whole world filled with magic. You can't see it, Kate, but it's there just below the surface.

"But not everyone can use magic. Most normal people, the people you see everyday, aren't witches and wizards and don't know about magic. They're…they're like you. Muggles. But muggles can't know about magic or they'd want witches and wizards to solve all of their problems for them, or they'd be afraid of us and try to hurt us. Also, sometimes muggle parents will have a kid who can do magic.

"Kids like that are called muggleborn. Some witches and wizards hate muggleborn and muggles. They don't trust them and they think that they're inferior and things like that. There is one very powerful man who especially hates muggles and muggleborns. He has an organization, called the Death Eaters, who want to kill or enslave all muggles and muggleborns. His name is Lord Voldemort, and he's the man who killed my parents."

I inhaled deeply. Harry, seeing the look on my face, hurried on with his explanation.

"Kate, the reason why he did it is because there was a prophecy - yeah, there really are people who can see the future, too. I won't go into specifics, but the prophecy said that a certain child would grow up to kill Voldemort. Professor Snape, who was his spy, told him about it. Voldemort figured that the child had to be me.

"My parents were part of a group that opposed Voldemort, and Professor Dumbledore lead it. He was the one who was being told the prophecy, so he knew that it would either be me or this other kid. He sent my parents and I into hiding and put a charm on the house so that only someone who had been told the location by a special person, the secret keeper, could come in. My parents picked one of their friends, Peter Pettigrew, to be the secret keeper, but he was a spy. He told Voldemort where we were and he came to kill me. He killed my dad, who was trying to hold him off, but he tried to bargain with my mum for some reason. He said that he wouldn't kill her if she'd let him kill me. But she…but she wouldn't. So he killed her, too, and then he decided to kill me."

Harry took a deep breath and paused, as if he wasn't sure how to keep going with the story. The whole time, his tone had been calm and almost lilting, like he was telling me a familiar bedtime story. Suddenly, I could see real pain in his eyes. It was affecting him to tell this story.

He looked me directly in the eye. "They call me the Boy Who Lived," he said in a low voice, "because I'm the only person who has ever, in all of history, survived the killing curse. I'm the only person who ever lived when Voldemort decided to kill me himself. When he tried, it backfired on him. Dumbledore said it was because of my mother's love. The curse didn't quite kill Voldemort, but it did hurt him bad enough that he had to retreat for years. Someone came and got me from the house and brought me here to live with Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, who, before you ask, actually are muggles.

"Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia hate magic almost as much as the Death Eaters hate muggles, and they never told me that I was a wizard. I didn't find out until I was one until I turned eleven and got a letter from Hogwarts. Since then, I've gone to school there to learn about magic.

"Between then and now, a lot has happened. Voldemort and I had a few… run-ins. He wasn't quite dead, and he had been plotting for years about how to come back to power. My friends and I stopped him twice before his servant Pettigrew found him. Just before I met you, Kate, Voldemort came back. He had had another spy inside the school, who set me up to participate in this tournament thing so that I could be abducted and Pettigrew could use my blood in potion that would give Voldemort his strength back. I escaped, but Voldemort was back at full-strength. And he still is.

"Two summers ago, when Dudley was sick and you helped me get him home? It was because of monsters send by Voldemort and his followers. Have you noticed all of the disasters that have been on the news for the last year or so? Nearly all of them were caused by Voldemort and his followers. Last year, when Sirius died, it was because of Voldemort and his followers. When Snape killed Dumbledore, it was based on his orders from Voldemort. People are dying everyday because of Voldemort. There's only one way to stop him: he has to die."

"And you have to be the one to kill him," I stated quietly. "Because of that prophecy thing." Harry hardly even blinked at my comment.

"Yes," he said plainly. His green eyes seemed to search my face for something that I wasn't sure existed. "So I have to leave soon. This evening, actually. There's a chance that I won't be back next summer, or even the summer after that. I didn't want to leave without telling you."

"Thank you for that," I said softly. I would have been very upset if he had left without telling me, but for some reason, knowing that didn't make me feel any better.

"So the big question is, Kate," Harry began, "whether you believe me or not."

I looked down at my hands, no longer able to meet his eyes. I hadn't realized that they were shaking until then. "I don't know. Half of me wants to call you a liar and a psychopath and run away."

"And the other half?" he asked carefully.

"The other half wants to believe but just can't."

Harry finally sat on the swing beside me. "Why not?" He didn't sound angry or even curious, just accepting. It made me feel horrible.

"Because I just…" I took a deep breath. "Because it can't be real. Real magic? Evil wizards who want to kill or enslave everyone I know? Things like that just don't exist, Harry. If they did, wouldn't someone have noticed by now?"

"It's a secret, Kate," he said, as if it would be obvious.

I couldn't accept his story as the truth, no matter how hard I wanted to. And I wanted to so badly. The thing was that this was bizarre, unbelievable. Maybe I would have believed, if it had been five years ago, but at that age I just couldn't seem to wrap my mind around the idea. Magic was real? No, the whole idea was laughable. But I wasn't laughing now; I was almost crying. I just couldn't win with this guy, could I? No matter what I did, no matter what he did, something was always wrong. It wasn't even so much that I thought Harry was lying to me. I knew he thought he was telling me the truth. It was his 'truth' that I couldn't comprehend or accept.

"Kate, why can't you believe me?" Harry asked, as if he was in pain.

I looked at him, fighting my hardest not to cry. "I don't know," I whispered.

* * *

><p>I stepped onto our lawn just in time to see Alec and Penelope fly out the door, Maria trailing behind the two of them with her keys in her hand. She stopped for a moment to lock the door. At first she didn't seem to notice me, but my quick breathing made her turn around. She blinked at me, for a moment, before she noticed that I was upset and something was wrong.<p>

"Katie, are you alright?" she inquired. I didn't answer, just continuing to walk towards the door. I didn't trust myself to speak. Maria met me in the middle of the front walk with a concerned expression on her face. She touched her cool hand to my forehead. "You look pale. Do you feel sick?"

"No, I feel fine," I lied. It wasn't quite true, strictly speaking. I didn't feel sick, but I was about to break down in tears on the doorstep.

Maria could see through it, though, and her eyebrows furrowed. "Kate, I know you well enough to know when something's wrong. Why don't you tell me what's gotten you so upset?"

I looked at her. Maria wasn't my mother; that was for sure. That was who I really wanted to talk to at that moment: my mum, who in my memories, always seemed to know the exact thing I needed to hear. But even if she wasn't my real mother, Maria had always treated me the same way as she treated Alec and Penelope. She told me, now and then, that she loved me as much as she would if I was her real daughter. It occurred to me, at that moment, how hard it must have been to love someone like your own child who didn't - couldn't - accept you as entirely their parent.

"Ria, I need some advice," I told her. She touched my hair briefly and smiled reassuringly at me.

"Of course, sweetheart. How about you go on up to your room and wait for me? I'll be there in a moment, once I break it to Alec and Pen that they don't have to fight over the front seat," she whispered conspiratorially, like we were playing a game. Strangely, it did make me feel better. I nodded and went on to my bedroom, where I proceeded to sit on my bed and clutch my old pillow in a death hug.

Maria found me up there with my head buried in my pillow, just as I was trying to convince myself to move. I wasn't putting up a very convincing argument with myself, which meant that I didn't even know she had entered until Maria sat down beside me on the bed.

"Alright, Kate, what's your problem?" she asked, her voice soft.

I uncurled myself slowly. "I don't know what to do," I said miserably.

"Well, why don't you know what to do? What's going on?" Maria asked, clearly puzzled.

I knew that I couldn't exactly tell her that my friend Harry believed in magic and thought he was a wizard, or that there was a murder who he had to kill. It took me a moment to think of a way to reasonably explain what my problem was.

"Well, you see, the thing is…" My voice trailed off. I reached my hands up to my face and rubbed them across my eyes. I sighed loudly as I decided that the best thing to do would be to just spit it out. "Ria, I found something out about Harry today, and I don't know if I can accept it." Seeing the look on her face, I hastily added, "It isn't anything bad, before you ask. He's not a thief or a killer or anything like that. What he told me just took me by surprise. It's sort of…unbelievable."

"Are you upset because Harry lied to you?" Maria asked hesitantly.

"No, I don't exactly think that he's lying to me." I paused. "I think that he thinks it's true. He thinks that he's telling me the truth, at least."

"Then what's wrong?" Maria smiled at me and pulled on the end of my ponytail lightly. "Katie, you're being silly. Isn't Harry your friend?"

I sniffed. "Yes."

"And don't you believe in your friends?"

"Yes. Of course." I frowned. "But that's just the thing, Maria. I don't know if I can accept what he's thinking."

"Hear me out, would you?" She touched my cheek lightly. "Sweetheart, you aren't always going to agree with everything that the people you care about say or do. That's not what's important. If everyone thought the same way, life would be boring. Kate, the important thing is to accept the people you care about the way that they are and to be there when they need you."

"I guess so." I bit the inside of my cheek. "But it's going to be hard."

"I didn't say that it would be easy. I know that you can do it. You're a wonderful girl, Kate. Show Harry just how open minded you can be." Maria stood up. "I think I'm going to round up the kids and get going now. Are you alright?"

I nodded. "I'm okay. Thanks, Ria."

My stepmother grinned. "You're welcome. I love you, Kate."

"Love you, too."

She stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her softly. I stared at my bedroom wall for a long time and wondered what I was going to do.

* * *

><p>Something was off on Privet Drive.<p>

The air around the place felt strangely heavy, and there was a sense of uneasy quiet that hung over the street. I didn't see any of the residents lingering outside; they all seemed to be behind closed doors and closed blinds indoors. A car passed me as I made my way down the street, definitely going over the speed limit; for a moment, I thought that I might see Dudley Dursley's face peering at me from the back window. I shivered slightly and quickened my pace as Number Four came into sight.

There was a woman with bright pink hair standing on the front step. The sight of her almost made me balk, but I took a deep breath and continued up the front walk. She seemed to be discussing something intently with a ginger man standing just inside the doorway. At first, neither of them noticed me, but when I was three feet away, the man stopped short in his conversation and nodded at me. The woman whirled around, her expression turning suspicious and fierce, as the ginger stepped forward beside her. Both of them drew something from their pockets, something suspiciously stick-like.

It occurred to me that, to someone who believed in magic, the sticks must be magic wands. It was the same instant when it occurred to me that they were pointing at me.

"Good afternoon, miss," the man said, in an easy, polite tone. At this new angle, I could see that there were four or five long, scary-looking scars across his face. They looked fairly new. I would have bet that, before they appeared, he was a handsome man. As it was, he looked like a very intimidating and dangerous man. "Is there something that we can help you with?"

"Hi," I squeaked. My own voice made me cringe. _Calm down, Kate, _I reminded myself. "Um, my name is Kate Foster. I'm a friend of Harry's. Is he in? I need to speak with him."

The man and the woman swapped looks. "Is it important?" the woman asked. Her voice was the perfect mix between confident and cautious. It reminded me of the friendly way that police spoke on the telly.

"Yes, it's important." I said stubbornly. Noting the way that woman's eyebrows raised just slightly, I toned it down somewhat. "Well, I mean, it's important to me. I don't know if you would consider it important, since I don't know you, but-"

The man leaned closer to the woman and whispered something. It sounded like "muggle." I perked up a bit.

"Yeah, I'm a muggle!" I said. It was probably a bit too enthusiastic. "I'm Harry's muggle friend. I need to speak with him, because if I don't now, I may not get the chance to for months or years or-"

"Bill? Tonks?" Harry's face appeared in between the man and the woman. He didn't seemed to notice me; he looked back and forth between the two of them. I could hear the now-familiar screech of an owl close by. What that Hedwig? "What's going on?"

"Well, this girl claims to be your friend," said the ginger man. I wondered if he was Bill or Tonks. Probably Bill, because Tonks seemed more like a surname, and I didn't know any women named Bill.

"She says that she needs to tell you something important," the woman - Tonks? - added smoothly. "Do you know her?"

Harry stepped forward and peered at me, as if he was inspecting me for some reason. "Well, she looks like my friend Kate." He pushed through the two of them, not harshly, and looked me over. I noticed that he had taken out a stick - wand? - too. "Name one of the books Kate Foster checked out from the library the day that we met."

"Um…" That had been so long ago. I wasn't sure if I remembered what I had read two years ago. "Was one of them _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? _At least, I think that one of them was _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_."

Harry nodded briefly. "Yeah, it's her. Don't worry, she's fine. I didn't expect that she would come, but she's fine." He looked back and forth between them. "Can we have a moment?" he asked quietly.

Bill and Tonks agreed easily and stepped, one after the other, back into Number Four. Over her shoulder, Tonks threw me an openly curious look before she closed the door.

Harry looked at me. His green eyes scrutinized me. That sort of expression on his face was becoming so familiar. "So. You came."

"Yeah. I came." I took a deep breath. "You aren't going to be late, are you?" I asked anxiously, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. I had been so anxious to just talk to him that I hadn't even thought about the possibility that I could be holding up his great escape. "I can leave. It's not important enough to risk your safety over what I've got to say…"

"No, it'll be alright," Harry told me, but he didn't look like he was being honest. He probably didn't know any better than I did, I thought wryly; it somehow didn't give me a huge feeling of confidence. "What do you need to tell me, Kate?"

"I wanted to say that…"I paused, thinking about how to phrase it. No amount of mental rehearsal had given me a definite guideline of what to say. "I wanted to say that I'm sorry," I went on, "and that, even if I'm still a bit iffy on the magic thing, I've decided that I believe you."

Harry blinked at me. "You do?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I do. I'm not really sure if I believe in magic, since, you know, I'm not a witch or something and I've never seen anyone use a spell or fly a broom or whatever, but I believe in you. Because you're my friend and I trust you and I care about you. And I don't believe that you would lie to me about something like an evil mass-murdering lunatic that you have to kill." He was silent for a long moment. I wondered if, maybe, I'd said something wrong again. The thought made me cringe; this might be the last time I ever saw him, and I was probably pissing him off. That was great.

But then Harry sighed. "I don't think that I would have believed it," he told me, "if it was turned around. If I was a muggle and someone was telling me about magic and the Death Eaters. I would have called them insane."

"I'm good at believing in things." I paused. "I just couldn't let you leave angry with me. I don't know when I'm going to see you again, and you said that you won't be able to write, so… I just had to say it. I believe in you."

"I want to give you something." Harry said suddenly, fishing around in his pocket and pulling out something I couldn't see clearly. He pressed it into my palm, and I looked to see that it looked like a spinning top made of glass. I looked at Harry questioningly. "I know that you aren't exactly on board with magic yet, but I think you need this. It's called a sneakoscope, and it's what people call a dark detector. I don't have time to explain everything to you right now, but what you need to know is that it lights up and spins if someone around you is doing something…devious."

"'Devious?'" I asked, my eyebrows furrowing. "It'll be spinning all of the time, then, with Alec and Pen around."

He shook his head vigorously. "No, this one's a bit different from the others. Like I said before, I don't have time to explain it, but…" Harry looked at me intensely, staring into my eyes heavily. "Kate, listen. If it starts to spin, you need to hide. Take your family or your friends with you if you have to, but go somewhere safe and don't come out until it stops. Promise that you will."

I blinked, suddenly fighting the urge to cry. "I promise."

I felt vulnerable, standing there looking up at him. So he thought that I was in danger. As troubling as that was, it was slightly less hard to deal with than the fact that he thought his problems were so powerful that they might spill onto me. I could almost feel it in the air around me, the way that people can feel static electricity; Harry was in trouble. Big trouble, probably even more than he had told me. I had a sinking feeling that, once he left today, he would be gone for good. And that this could be my last chance to ever see him, to stand this close and hear his voice and look into his eyes.

"Take this," I said, reaching into my pocked for the piece of paper I'd filled out before I left the house. He looked at it uncertainly. "It's got my mobile phone number on it. I know that it isn't exactly an evil-sensing spinning top, but I want you to take it just in case you ever need it. I might be able to help you with something or maybe one day you'll just want to talk or…"

I felt the paper slip through my fingers as he grasped it and tucked it into his pocket. "Thanks, Kate. I'm glad you came."

He looked sad, but not as if he was sad because he was saying goodbye to a friend. He looked like someone who had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and that maybe that was what he was.

"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," I said, just as I felt the familiar wetness on my cheeks that could only mean that I had started crying.

I threw my arms around Harry's neck spontaneously, so suddenly that I almost knocked him over and he subconsciously put his arms around my waist. I buried my face into his shirt, taking in the moment. The way that it felt to be around him, the way that he made my emotions dance like puppets, the way that his arms felt when the protectively wrapped around my waist as he hugged me back. My face pressed against his shoulder, I took a deep breath; he smelled like rain and grass and, in an entirely masculine sort of way, like lilies. After a long, long moment - probably too long of one to take during such a crucial moment - I pulled away from the tear stain on his shirt and looked up into those beautiful green eyes.

"You smell like apples," Harry stated dully. It was such a stupid, matter-of-fact thing to say that I let out a teary chuckle.

"Must be my new shampoo," I joked. It was a weak joke, but he gave an unexpected and appreciative half-smile. It made me feel like I had been punched in the stomach.

This was how it should have been between the two of us, all along. It should have been this open and this simple. It could have been this friendly and natural all along, but of course it wasn't. I could finally see and understand him fully: his secrets, all of his euphemized explanations, what must have been going through his head when he gave me all of those significant looks. A part of me was screaming about the unfairness of it all and another was begging him not to leave me again.

"Kate," Harry said suddenly, sounding pained. I looked up at him, looked at his expression. His mouth opened like he was going to say something else, but I just didn't think that I could bear to hear it.

I stood on my tiptoes and kissed Harry Potter on the lips, stopping his words easily. It was hardly more than a peck, really, but it was something real and it left me feeling dizzy when I dropped back to Earth.

"Don't forget me," I said softly, with a forced smile. I had to fight to keep my voice level. Suddenly, I was aware that a gaggle of witches and wizards, in all varieties, were standing in front of the window of 4 Privet Drive. Some looked just as shocked as Harry, but I noticed one or two others who tittered behind the glass.

I held up my hand and wiggled my fingers at them playfully, like there weren't tears and snot dripping down my face and I hadn't just kissed The Boy Who Lived.

Dusk found me laying on my back in the grass at the park, staring at the sky. I should have been heading for home, but instead I found myself transfixed by the multicolored streaks of light that seemed to streak away from Little Whinging in every direction. It was easier to pretend that they weren't the lights of some kind of wizard battle in the sky. Instead, I tried to imagine that they were fireworks.

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><p><em><strong>One more chapter and then the sequel. Who's excited?<br>**_


	9. What's this? A Christmas bonus chapter?

_**If you've been keeping up with this story, you're probably like, "ZOMG! The final chapter of Hero Complex? Here we go, finally at the end..." Sadly, that's not the case. Just so you know, THIS IS NOT THE FINAL CHAPTER OF HERO COMPLEX. This is a Christmas-themed (sort of) bonus chapter, from me to you! Isn't that nifty?**_

**The story here is one of technical difficulties (isn't it always?). I was planning to do a lot of writing for the next *official* chapter of the story and the first chapter of the sequel while my school was out for the holidays, but life had other plans. Here's the too-long story: the battery of my laptop can't hold a charge, so I have to keep it plugged up Unfortunately, my laptop charger DIED, for whatever reason, the one night I had written most of the chapter. I had to get a new charger, and then I discovered that the document did not recover. **

**I hate myself for this, you guys. I really do.  
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**No new chapter until at least New Year's, I'm afraid. Instead, you got a one-shot I had half-finished before my technical failure that was originally to be posted in a separate piece. I meant to post it on Christmas Eve, then it got pushed to Christmas Day, and now it's just after midnight on the 26th, but it's going up. **

**Please don't be angry at me for psyching you out. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. I'm sure that you all know that, though, so why do I put one of these on here?**

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><p><em>Christmas is a time when you get homesick - even when you're at home. <em>

- Carol Nelson

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><p><span>December 24, 1997<span>

All around me, it was Christmas.

People were chatting amiably as they sipped punch or wine and munched on gingerbread and candy canes. They were wearing Christmas-appropriate clothing, new jumpers embroidered with reindeer and snowmen, and talking about Christmas-appropriate things, such as gifts and traditions and the long ride to Grandma's house in the morning. "Jingle Bell Rock" was playing over the stereo. Every once in a while, a delight squeal could be heard as friends handed over gifts. The fireplace was lit up so that it glowed.

I sat on the sofa in the middle of the Allens' Christmas Eve party and tried not to feel like I was completely out of place. Nina and her mother threw one annually, invited all of their friends, family and neighbors, and generally proceeded to enjoy themselves. My parents and siblings had already come and gone from the party, due to Alec and Pen's wish to wake up early in the morning to open presents, and I was beginning to be sleepy enough to wish I'd gone home with them. Once again, I had found myself at a party filled with people I didn't know very well. It seemed like my friends had deserted me. Nina was in the middle of a gaggle of cousins from Spain; they jabbered in Spanish like there would be no tomorrow. Lizzie was snogging with Noah, her boyfriend of a month, in the corner of the room. They certainly didn't seem to notice that I wasn't partying.

It had been a busy day; my family had gone to London today to visit with my grandparents, both on my mum's side and my dad's side. I had woken up at an ungodly hour of the morning, so that we could leave after breakfast to spend lunch with my dad's parents. We had exchanged gifts there before we raced to my mum's mum's house for tea and the exchange of more gifts. After that, we had come home only to drop off the aforementioned presents before we had come to this party. As much as I loved my family, with all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, they exhausted me.

Sitting on the sofa at Nina's house was probably the first time that entire day when I had sat still while not actively doing something. It was actually a very comfortable spot, and I allowed myself to slip my shoes off and tuck my feet up, too. The upholstery of the couch was very soft, and I happened to be wearing a snugly, warm new scarf I'd been given that day. Almost as if something were trying to entice me to sleep, the fast-paced Christmas carol that had been playing shifted into a soft, lullaby-type hymn in another language (Spanish, probably).

My eyelids became droopy as I began to focus on the song. It was very pretty, though I didn't for the life of me know what the words meant. Without meaning to, I leaned deeper into the sofa's soft cushions. I was so sleepy and warm, and this was all so nice and peaceful.

I didn't mean to fall asleep, honestly. But it did happen.

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><p>The first things I noticed about the dream was that it was summertime and that I was in the park. I was sitting on the swing, and I felt an odd sense of calm. The sun shone almost impossibly bright, and the wind was strong enough to pull my hair from its ponytail. On a day that lovely, there should have been at least a dozen kids at the park, but I seemed to be absolutely alone. I didn't mind, either; I kicked my feet, pushing away from the ground slightly. I was waiting for something, obviously, but I was much more patient than I could ever remember being.<p>

From the angle I was sitting at, I didn't see him coming at all. Maybe he didn't actually come from anywhere. Maybe he had magically appeared from thin air.

"Kate," Harry said. He sounded different in my dream. His voice was the same, but his tone was so much lighter. I had never heard him like that before, and it astounded me. "Hey."

I turned around at the sound of his voice.

He looked so much like he always had: rumpled hair, crooked glasses, clothes that he might have slept in. At the same time, he was moving without any worry and he looked at ease. I'd never seen him look at me without some kind of hidden emotions in his eyes, so it was strange to see him looking at me so openly. The word that came to mind was free. In my dream, Harry looked free. It was a good look for him.

He sat in the swing beside me, and I felt my lips stretch into a grin. My cheeks were flushed, I noted suddenly. If it was because of the sun or because of Harry, I wasn't sure, but I was willing to bet that it was Harry.

"Hi, stranger," I said teasingly, dragging my feet in the dirt. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

His lip lifted in sort of a half-smile. I scowled. Even in my dream, I couldn't get him to smile. "It has." He paused, then sighed. He sounded almost wistful. "You haven't changed at all, have you?"

I shrugged. "I like to think that I'm growing up. It's always possibly that I'm not, I suppose," I said thoughtfully. Harry made a thoughtful noise, his eyes never leaving mine.

My face felt hot; I was sure that I must have looked like a tomato. "I've been waiting on you for so long," I told him. "For a letter or a visit or something, so that I know that you aren't dead. I don't think you're dead, are you?"

He shrugged. "I don't feel dead."

"That's good, I suppose," I murmured. Then, "I don't suppose that you're back to stay, are you?"

"No," he said, very casually. It didn't seem to phase him at all. "I've still got things to do."

"I was thinking about you today, you know," I told him. "I was thinking about the fact that I have no idea when I'll see you again."

"If you'll see me again," Harry corrected helpfully.

"Yeah, I guess," I muttered. "If I'll see you again."

We were silent for a long time before Harry finally said something. "I'm cold, Kate."

I looked at him strangely. "You're cold? But its so warm outside."

In response, Harry touched his fingers to the my bare arm. His touch gave me shivers; he did feel cold, I decided. For a moment, I wondered if he was sick, if there was something wrong with him. I reached out and touched his face with my hand. It was cold, too, like a cube of ice.

"You aren't really here, are you?" I asked, my voice cracking a bit. "And it isn't really summer, right?"

"Right," Harry smiled at me crookedly. It made me almost want to smile. "It's Christmas Eve."

"I wish that you were there," I said. I thought that I had started to cry, but I couldn't seem to tell if I had or not. "I wish that you were with me. I miss you, you know. I forgot that I could miss someone so much, until you left. I felt like my mum had died all over again. Only I don't think I'll ever get used to not knowing. I wish that I didn't have to. I wish that you would come home for Christmas. We would give each other presents and you would finally meet my family and I would know that you were safe, just for one night."

"Little Whinging isn't home for me, Kate," he informed me plainly. "It never really was."

"I know," I told him. My voice came out like I was crying. "Happy Christmas anyway, Harry. Where ever you are. I miss you."

Harry smiled at me. "Happy Christmas, Kate."

* * *

><p>Someone was shaking me awake. "Kate? Kate, wake up!"<p>

I mumbled something as I phased back into consciousness, something that I thought sounded sort of like "Happy Christmas." I opened my eyes to see Nina and Lizzie peering at me. I looked around quickly. There really weren't very many more people there, but someone had destroyed the living room. How wild could the party have gotten in the half-hour that I'd been asleep? I wondered.

"What's going on?" I asked drowsily. "Why'd you wake me up?"

"Your mobile is ringing."

I snapped to attention pretty quickly after that. "My phone?"

Lizzie nodded. "Yes. Your phone."

I fished it out of the pocket of my jeans without much thought and hit the 'accept' button.' I thought that it was probably Dad or Maria, checking to see when I would be home. "Hello?"

"You are receiving a collect call. Do you accept the charges?" said an automated voice on the other end of the phone. I frowned.

"Yes," I said cautiously into the mouth piece. I had no idea who might be calling, but I was willing to talk for a moment. Automated noises began over the line, but they were brief and ended quickly. "Hello, this is Kate," I said.

I could hear someone talking in the background, saying things that I thought sounded like my name and then something about a disguise. It was pretty odd to me, but I wasn't hearing the whole conversation.

"I'm sorry, miss," said a man's voice on one end of the line. It was rougher and thicker than most, and it was unfamiliar, but something about it made me think. "Wrong number."

"That's alright," I said, trying to sound cheery. "Happy Christmas, sir."

"Happy Christmas, Kate," the main said. I didn't know the voice, but the words sounded familiar. It didn't matter, though, because he hung up very briefly.

It all made me wonder.

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><p><strong>Happy holidays, everyone! And next time you get an update from me, I promise it will be that last chapter!<strong>


	10. Call It An Ending

**So...this is it. I've never completed a story before; am I supposed to write something meaningful here? I'm not really sure, but let me say this: thank you, everyone, for taking the time to read this story. Let me know what you think of the last chapter, please. I'd be ever so grateful.**

**Also, be on the lookout for the sequel. It's working title is _Separation Anxiety_, and I've got the majority of the first chapter written already. With any luck, it should be up within two weeks.  
><strong>

**Disclaimer: Who would ever really think that I own **_**Harry Potter? **_**It's just ridiculous, that's what it is.**

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><p>I scanned the grocery list absently as I pushed the shopping trolley down the narrow frozen food aisle at the local supermarket. I decided that Maria's specific quantities and brand names weren't any help when she was in too much of a hurry to write legibly. Maria was currently at home, cleaning our house from top to bottom in an attempt to impress Dad's boss when he came for dinner that night, and she had sent me to the shop to get the ingrediants for her planned meal. In between directing Alec and Pen's efforts in room cleaning and trying to calm down Bruno after an episode with the neighbor's psychotic tabby, she had scrawled the list on the back of an envelope.<p>

It was so sloppy that I couldn't tell if the first item was "oranges" or "pork roast." I sighed loudly and came to a complete stop, raising the list closer to my face. _It'll probably be the roast, _I thought, though I wasn't really sure. Maria had gotten a new cookbook that used all sorts of ingredients in somewhat unusual ways, including oranges. I made a face at the list, probably coming across as crazy to the young boy and his mother who were peering at the chicken nugget selection near by. _Maybe I should get both? _I wondered. _No, I should call Maria and ask her what she want me to get. _

I proceeded toward the meat aisle, anyway, deciding that Maria would be wanting some kind of it for the main dish, anyway. At the same time, I began to take out my mobile phone and search through my phone numbers for our house phone. It didn't occur to me until a moment later that multitasking wasn't one of my great skills. There was a loud metallic sound as I unintentionally rammed my trolley into that of a large man coming in the opposite direction. I didn't think that I had hit him, but I heard a short series of thumps as the man dropped the five tins of soup that he had been putting into the cart. We were both startled, but he seemed as if he was ready to turn around and run out the door.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," I said, immediately dropping on the floor and picking up the soup. I looked up at the man as I clutched at a tin of cream of chicken. He was younger than I had thought and had a sort of stupefied look on his face. "You're alright, aren't you?" I asked worriedly, as I replaced the soup in the trolley, tin by tin.

"Uh…" He blinked dumbly, then nodded a little too quickly. "I mean, yes, I'm fine."

I had seen this guy before, somewhere; something about his expression, his eyes, made me stop. I peered up at him for a long moment before I realized that I was looking up at Harry's cousin, Dudley Dursley. My mouth gaped open and I let out a tiny gasp.

"Dudley? That's you, isn't it?" I asked, shocked. Dudley was thinner than he had been the last time I'd seen him, more than a year before; he was still huge, but he was less bulky now. His hair was shaggier, too, and his general bearing seemed different. He seemed paranoid and easily startled, the farthest thing from the schoolyard-bully-turned- party-going-punk that I remembered. "Do you remember me? I'm Kate Foster."

The Dursleys had packed up and moved away the same day that Harry had left the summer before; their quick departure had been the talk of the town for months. Mr. Dursley had suddenly taken a leave of absence from Grunnings, the large local factory that he directed; Mrs. Dursley had informed the members of the local garden club and book club that she would be going away. Dudley, for his part, had never returned to Smeltings after that summer. It had occurred to me that they might have been danger from Lord Whatshisface, but I had never mentioned it to anyone because the magic thing wasn't common knowledge.

"Oh, yeah," Dudley said, sounding more calm. He didn't look much better, but at least he didn't look like he was going to run away screaming any more. "Harry's Kate."

I blinked, my stomach turning. _Harry's Kate. _Our two names, linked together with a possessive, gave me a strange feeling. Compared to the last discussion I had had with Dudley about myself and Harry, being called Harry's Kate as opposed to Harry's girl made it seem like less of a romantic link. It could have been taken romantically, or it could have been taken in a friendly way. At the same time, it seemed like a firm link, and that didn't seem right when Harry and I hadn't had any contact for almost ten months.

We hadn't exchanged a word since the day he left. In that time, I had tried to keep busy with other things. I had been more social with my family and friends, I had babysitted more often, and I had studied harder for my classes than I ever had before. However, those things that I had done to keep myself busy had never worked. I had dreams about Harry; I thought about Harry; I worried about Harry. I had been writing letters to him all year, even though I had no way to send them.I had even broken up with Noah (also known as the sweetest guy in the universe) because I felt guilty over my feeling s for Harry, and now he was dating Lizzie, which was all sorts of awkward.

Suffice to say, I hadn't been able to keep myself busy enough

"Yeah," I replied, forcing a smile, "Harry's Kate. So, Dudley. How have you been? What are you doing here?"

"Fine, I guess," he told me blankly. He didn't have a very large vocabulary, did he? "My family's just come back to town, and we need food and stuff."

"Oh, really?" I asked, trying to seem upbeat and cheerful. "So, er, do you know anything about the…the war?" Was it really a war? I supposed that it was; what else did you call it when to factions battled it out?

"Oh, that. It's over."

"Over?" I was shocked. I had expected some kind of big sign from, well, someone that the thing was over and done with. "Really?"

"Yeah. Harry finally did it and killed the guy." Dudley blinked at my expression. I thought that he must be wondering about how dense I was. "You mean you didn't know? Harry didn't tell you?"

"No, I had no idea," I muttered. I frowned, feeling crummy. I guess that I had been expecting, like Dudley, that Harry would send me a letter or something when the war was over, or that he might have come to visit. "Has it been over with for very long?" I could understand him not having time in the last twenty-four to seventy-two hours after his big victory to send me a note. That would be reasonable.

Dudley had to stop and think that time. "It's been about a week, give or take a day."

A week seemed like an eternity, all of a sudden. I would have understood if Harry was on the run or something and never had the opportunity to send Hedwig to me or drop by, but he had had a week (give or take a day) to send me a note. How long would it have taken him to write a simple, 'Hi, Kate, I'm not dead?' message and give it to an owl? Five minutes, tops, I thought. I knew that Harry was probably busy (weren't all heroes, after they slaid their dragons or whatever?), but it didn't make me feel any less insignificant. After all the time that I had spent worrying over him and thinking about him, he couldn't spare five minutes to write me a note?

It was good to know what I really meant to him.

"Have you seen Harry since it happened, Dudley?" I was trying to sound calm and happy, but my voice sounded too sharp.

"Yes. He dropped by the place where my mum and dad and I were staying, to tell us the good news." He paused. "I can't believe that he didn't at least write you a letter or something, you know, considering…" Considering the fact that Dudley's parents had treated Harry neglectfully and harshly since he was an infant and Dudley had bullied him nearly mercilessly until they were in their teens, and he had still made time to go see them. "I mean, I thought that the two of you were sort of close."

"I thought that we were sort of close, too," I murmured. "I suppose that we were both wrong about that." I shook my head, as if it could clear the thoughts from my head. "Oh, well, I'm sure that he'll get around to it eventually."

Reassuring yourself seemed like one of the most difficult things in the world.

Dudley and I said goodbye shortly after that; he seemed anxious to get out the shop, and it was only a matter of seconds after we ran out of things to say that Maria called me to add more items to her list of groceries. I hurried away to finish shopping, all the while wondering when exactly it would be that I would hear from Harry.

* * *

><p>The letter I hoped for didn't come that month or the month after that, and I spent my summer wondering when Harry would show up on my doorstep. He never did.<p>

* * *

><p>"Just think," Maria said softly. She was leaning on the door frame of my bedroom, with a sad smile on her face. Tears were threatening to spill from her eyes, which made me feel a bit guilty. "You're leaving to go to university today. The whole world is at your fingertips."<p>

I turned around, unable to stand the sight of tears in my stepmother's eyes. "I know. It's so amazing."

Maria said something about finishing tidying up for breakfast before we left and headed downstairs, but I barely noticed. I was too busy thinking.

My bedroom looked strange and empty; it had been striped of nearly everything that had made it feel like my bedroom. The decorative plaque with my name on it was no longer on the walls, and my clothes were packed away. The knickknacks and trivial things that had inhabited the space on top of my desk were packed up. Even my bedside lamp had been taken out of the room, so that I could use it in my new dorm. My bed was there, and so was the quilt on top that I had been using for years, but my pillows were gone. In their place sat Penelope, sitting cross-legged while holding something in her lap. She wouldn't meet my eyes.

"You have everything that you need, right?" she asked, sounding almost nothing like my Pen at all. I sat down beside her with a sigh.

"Yes, I've got everything I need," I said. I looked at what she was holding in her hands. To my surprise, it was a stuffed toy. After a long moment, I recognized it. Years ago, when I was ten and Penelope was five and our parents had recently gotten married, I had given it to Pen. It was a stuffed turtle, with a shell in a rainbow of colors and a soft green body. It had been one of my favorites when I was little, too, and was now so old that its shell was fading and it had lost on of its button eyes.

Two days before Pen and Maria had moved into the house with Dad, Alec, and I, Pen's pet turtle had died. For a week, she had cried over that turtle at night. I remembered how it had made me feel to hear her cry like that at night, back when I didn't know her well enough to make it better. I had hated it so much that I gave her Paul, the stuffed turtle. "This one is better," I had told her. She had given me a look that said she didn't believe me. "You know why? Because he'll never die and leave you. He'll stay with you forever, if you want him to. So don't cry anymore, okay?" She had hugged me, and for the first time ever, I had known that we were sisters.

"I didn't know you still had that," I told her.

"Of course I do," Pen said, with a small scowl. She was fourteen now and considered herself all grown up, but she hadn't played with any of her dolls or stuffed animals since she was about seven. "You gave it to me. Why would I get rid of it?"

I shrugged, and we lapsed into silence. "Where's Alec at, anyway?" I asked.

"Downstairs, watching football with Dad," she replied simply. "I think he expects us to be having a big emotional moment up here, and he wants to stay away."

I chuckled. Alec liked to avoid all excessive shows of emotions. "Why would he think that? We won't be having any big emotional moments until we get to the city, at least."

My family was coming along with me to London to help me move into my new room at King's College. It was sort of my dream school, for a number of reasons: my mother had gone their when she went to college, its location was central in the city, it had a great academic record. It was a miracle that I'd been admitted at all, since it was also hugely exclusive, but the studying I'd done since Harry left Little Whinging had paid off when I took my A-levels.

The only thing was that most of my friends wouldn't be with me. Nina had, to my astonishment, announced her intent to go to school in Seville, Spain, where most of her mother's family lived, and while Lizzie was also going to university in the city, she wouldn't be at King's. Most of my other friends were scattered around; the only person I considered myself close to who would be attending King's with me was Noah, which was sure to both amazingly comforting and significantly awkward. I could foresee myself becoming the third wheel often on Lizzie and Noah's romantic excursions and taking a lot of weekend trips home. I hadn't even spoken to my new roommate yet.

"You should take Paul with you," Penelope said, finally looking at me. She looked so remarkably grown-up; her hazel eyes had been outline with black eyeliner and she had fixed her hair to be bone-straight. She was nothing like the five-year-old girl I kept had given my stuffed turtle to as a kid. "Just in case you get lonely at university."

"That's okay, Pen, I really don't need-" I began. Apparently, she disagreed, because she then threw Paul the turtle at my head before I could finish. "Why, you devil child!" I sputtered at her. She shrieked with childish laughter and sprang off my bed as I grabbed the turtle and threw it at her back. It bounced off as she ran out the door.

"Coward!" I yelled as she skittered down the stairs. Regardless of that, I laughed as I picked Paul up off the floor. I took a moment to look at him, with his fading colors, missing eye, and dusty fluff, before I tucked him under my arm and took him downstairs with me.

Alec turned his head from his place on the sofa, probably after hearing all of the noise, and eyed the stuffed animal. "Are you really going to take that?" he asked.

"Yes. Why not?"

He mumbled something unintelligible before he turned back around to watch his football game on the telly. I sighed. Alec had been determined to ignore me as much as possible for the last week or so; I figured that it was just his way of adjusting to the fact that I wouldn't really be living at home anymore. Still, it was more than slightly annoying. I didn't like to be ignored; I didn't like moody boys. I leaned over the back of the sofa. "Are you going to miss me when I go to school?" I asked playfully.

He glared at me sideways. "I dunno. You probably can't be so annoying if you're in London."

"Oh, little brother, you're breaking my heart," I told him dramatically. Alec only scoffed.

I felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.

"Fine, then," I said, much less enthusiastically. "I'll leave you alone now."

I moved away from the sofa and went back to the downstairs toilet, where I proceeded to put my hair in a ponytail and stare at my own face in the mirror.

It hadn't occurred to me before a few seconds ago, but if I went to King's College, how would Harry ever know where I was? What if he sent me a letter, but Hedwig couldn't find me and had no way of bringing it to me? And, on the off chance that he came to visit, I probably wouldn't be there to see him. I wondered if Dad and Maria were still too worried about his supposed criminal activities to tell him where I would be. Would he even keep trying to contact me if they sent him away?

What if Harry gave up on me, just because I wasn't there?

"Kate?" Maria called. "Are you ready yet?"

My first instinct was to tell her that no, I wasn't ready to go; I would never be ready to go.

"Yes, Ria," I called over my shoulder, sounding more confident than I felt. Before I walked out the door, though, I took a deep breath. There was really nothing else to do, I decided. I had to go out there and grow up. It was time to start my future. If Harry was included in that future, that was great. If not, I would have to be fine with that, too. I missed him, and there was nothing wrong with that, but I would have to move on and go live my life. I had my family and my friends. I had an amazing opportunity just around the corner.

I couldn't wait for him at home anymore. If Harry Potter wanted me, he would just have to come and get me.

* * *

><p><strong>I hope it made you smile. <strong>


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